-The Hindu The distinct characteristics of India’s agriculture require that a reformed state must ensure farmer, consumer welfare For at least four decades now, economic policy making globally has dogmatically adhered to the notion that a progressively reduced role of the state would automatically deliver greater economic growth and welfare to the people. Since reform, by definition, is taken to mean only one thing, sector after sector is compulsively sought to be...

-Hindustan Times Studies that measure the contribution of MGNREGS towards improving the adaptive capacity of the beneficiary households have remained few and far between. While the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) has been a valuable employment tool and safety net, as seen in the migrant crisis, its role in building ecosystems resilient to the climate crisis is being increasingly recognised. There is now an urgent need to bring upfront...

-Centre for Science and Environment * Niti Aayog vice chairperson Rajiv Kumar releases the report, which provides the real picture of organic farming in India: only 2 per cent of India’s net sown area organically farmed, and a mere 1.3 per cent of farmers registered to do organic farming * Organic and natural farming must be upscaled to make Indian agriculture sustainable, says the report * Needs to be turned into a mass...

-The Indian Express Indian-American soil scientist Dr Rattan Lal said in Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh soils are degraded and depleted because ‘organic matter' is quite below (.5-.2 per cent). In the past five decades, the state had achieved several firsts in the field of agriculture and even became the first state in the country to install soil fertility map in each village to improve soil health. But the soil of Punjab...

-Hindustan Times The Locust Warning Organisation (LWO) sprayed Malathion 96 and Chlorpyrifos, both organophosphate pesticides, to control the locust swarms across states. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations said on Friday that it may declare the locust invasion a plague if it takes a turn for the worse after breeding by the voracious, crop-crunching insects in India, Pakistan and West Africa. FAO now categorises the locust invasion that has...