-Financial Express According to Rao, the ICAR committee went through more than 1,400 scientific journals on various methods of promotion of sustainable agriculture besides interacting with farmers who have claimed to have adopted ZBNF across seven states. Large scale adoption of Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) — farm practices which exclude all synthetic chemical inputs and promote use of on-farm biomass — would result in ‘tremendous reduction’ in production of agricultural crops...
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Organic farming can lead to good yields, even in an intensively farmed area -Rajinder Chaudhary
-Down to Earth A survey in Haryana last year found that 45 per cent of 218 organic farmers got yields for wheat better than the state official average yield The relative merit of organic farming is recognised. Still, it is usually recommended only for areas of low chemical usage and not for intensively farmed areas such as those where the Green Revolution took place in the 1960s like Punjab, Haryana and western...
More »Why pulse production in India needs better incentives -GS Kaushal
-Down to Earth Productivity of released varieties of pulses is much lower than the notified variety of lower-yielding ones When it comes to pulses, India stands out: The country produces a quarter of all pulses in the world and consumes 27 per cent — more than any other. India is also the largest importer of pulses. Madhya Pradesh is a major pulse-producing state in the country; it caters to 32 per cent of...
More »Seeds of Hope -Harish Damodaran
-The Indian Express India’s premier farm research and education institute has a full-time director after nearly four years. It is an institution whose blockbuster varieties account for more than 95% of the country’s Rs 32,800-crore annual basmati rice export revenues, nearly half of its total wheat area, and a quarter of that sown under mustard. Yet, the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI, better known as Pusa Institute) has an annual research budget...
More »Explained: Sowing a new Seeds regime -Harish Damodaran
-The Indian Express Govt plans to change existing law to ensure availability of quality seeds to farmers. How will the proposed Bill to replace The Seeds Act, 1966 meet its objective of ‘regulating quality of seeds for sale, import, export’? The existing 1966 law already provides for regulation of the quality of seeds. What does the new Bill seek to change? The current Act only covers “notified kinds or varieties of seeds”. Thus,...
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