-CivilSocietyOnline.com WHEN the Sri Lankan economy collapsed with a sigh recently, prominently sticking out of the debris was a failed attempt to take the island nation into full-scale organic agricultural production. The Rajapaksa government had virtually overnight ordered a switch to organic agriculture to save foreign exchange on the import of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. But going organic, instead of being the solution, became a bigger problem with food crops failing and the...

-NITI Aayog Working Paper, ISBN: 978-81-953811-7-3 Abstract -  The importance of agriculture in an economy usually declines as it climbs the development ladder. Raising agriculture productivity has been known to be an important precursor. Labour productivity in agriculture can either be increased by higher land productivity or higher land availability per farmer and mechanisation. In India, however, the dramatic increase in land productivity through industrial farming has caused severe environmental damage and...

-Centre for Science and Environment It is becoming clearer by the day that chemical fertilizers are not a sustainable solution to the problem of depletion of soil nutrients as a result of agriculture, particularly crop production. Biofertilizers and organic fertilizers not only provide nutrients to crops, they also help in restoring soil health and ecological balance. As we (re)discover the power and potential of biofertilizers and organic fertilizers, we need to...

-TheQuint.com A new IPCC report wants the world to decarbonise. Sri Lanka was doing just that, albeit with shoddy planning. Yet another IPCC report is out that warns of dire consequences if the world doesn’t course-correct and pursue a low-carbon pathway. This means drastically cutting our dependence on fossil fuels, among a string of other hard-hitting measures. One country did try that by announcing a ban on chemical-based farming and its decision...

-The Hindu Business Line Will provide garden kits to every home to grow their own nutritional food Chennai: The Tamil Nadu government has devised an innovative nutritional self-sufficiency garden programme, among other schemes, as part of its long-term goal to achieve food and nutritional security in the State. It is attempting to get every household in the 12,500-odd villages in the State to grow its requirement of nutritional food in its own backyard....