-Down to Earth Groundwater level in Katihar, Begusarai at 25 & 24 ft respectively Groundwater levels reportedly have dipped in 11 of Bihar's 38 districts despite a good monsoon in 2019. The state is predominantly dependent on Agriculture. In Katihar the level dipped to 25 feet, according to a telemetry report released by the Bihar’s minor water resources department in February, 2020. Several rivers, including the Ganga, Mahananda, Kosi and Righa, pass through...

-TheWire.in By not including tenant farmers in ambit of its schemes, the state government is leaving marginalised farmers in the lurch Suryapet (Telangana): Remembering how her husband died five years ago, and the hardships she has faced since, 45-year-old B. Saidamma is reduced to tears. Her husband, B. Bhadrayya from Bhaktalapuram village in Penpahad mandal of Telangana’s Suryapet district, died by suicide after he was unable to pay back a Rs 5...

-Down to Earth Nirmala Sitharaman's Budget has all the ingredients to deepen India’s farm crisis These are desperate times for India. Rural unemployment was at a 45-year-high while consumption expenditure of rural families fell 9 per cent between 2011-12 and 2017-18, according to a report by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), which the government never released but got leaked to the media in November 2019. Between 2011-12 and 2015-16, the income of farmers...

-The Hindu Among this year’s Padma Shri awardees are a father and daughter who turned a barren wasteland into a riot of trees and crops Furrowed with deep gullies, its topsoil all but gone, this degraded patch of land near Odagaon in Odisha’s Nayagarh district was once a dense forest. Whenever nature tried to reclaim it, the little shoots would be nibbled away by goats and sheep. The villagers who owned the...

-Down to Earth This is because Agriculture in India is largely dependent on chemicals including pesticides and their usage has a huge impact on the health of humans, animals, bio-diversity and the environment Pesticides are regulated in India through the Insecticides Act, 1968 and Insecticides Rules, 1971. The experience in administering this Act over the last five decades has exposed certain gaps which spurred the need to propose a new law. The Pesticide...