In our frantic search for solutions to our water crisis, we tend to overlook the self-evident relationship between water, food, and energy. It is still not too late. As my colleague Tony Allan, a Stockholm Water Prize laureate says so pithily, the three are the corners of a triangle with politics and emotion at its center. About 80 percent of accessible freshwater in Asia is used for agriculture; the rest...

Ample monsoon rains and higher prices of farm goods are likely to lift Indian fertiliser demand in 2010/11 by 13 percent to a record 60 million tonnes, testing local fertiliser makers' ability to raise output in sync with the demand, industry officials said. India's June-Sept monsoon rains, a key factor in determining food grain production and fertiliser demand in the country, were 2 percent above normal in the current year, weather office data showed....

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, since 2003, one Indian farmer has committed suicide every 30 minutes. In 2008, 16,196 farmers took their own lives, bringing the total number of farmer suicides in India between 1997 and 2008 to 199,132. (Significantly, P. Sainath is of the opinion that like all government data, these figures too are unreliable. For when women farmhands kill themselves, their deaths are not enlisted as...

A good monsoon this year will help Indian agriculture grow robustly and benefit the food processing and packaging sectors, Minister of State for Agriculture and Consumer Affairs K. V. Thomas said Tuesday. 'Companies which have invested in supply chain of farming like contract farming, food processing and packaging will benefit greatly from good agricultural output,' he said at a conference organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry. He said good agricultural growth...

Food and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar today said the government will not take any decision on decontrol of the sugar sector without consulting the states and the process of which will begin in 8-10 days. "I am going to start the process of discussion with the stakeholders and the state governments in 8-10 days time. Without the consultation, I will not move any proposal (on decontrol) to the Cabinet," he told...