-Hindustan Times Ranchi: Better known as Jharkhand’s waterman, Simon Oraon had always been more popular among farmers in the district’s Bedo block than the country’s newspaper-reading public. But all that changed on Monday, when the President’s office announced that he would be given the coveted Padma Shri award for his contribution to environment conservation. Oraon, 83, has been waging a war against drought since the day he dropped out of school as...

-The Hindu Ramesh from Hoovinahalli is making waves with his biofuel, a 1:10-litre combination of honge oil and diesel BENGALURU: This farmer from Hoovinahalli in Hassan district has not passed SSLC. Yet, his passion for innovation and experimentation is evident in all that he does. He runs a tractor, ragi-cleaning machine, and an irrigation pumpset on biofuel that he has produced and blended with conventional fuel. His achievement is being hailed by...

-The Hindu City fetes Jadav Payeng and Abdul Kareem — men who built forests from scratch. Mumbai: Leaders of nations the world over devote a large part of their time, money and policy framework to the growth of the economy. But if they held their breath for a minute, they would realise it is life-sustaining oxygen that needs their urgent attention. At the recently-concluded Paris climate change conference, Jadav “Molai” Payeng, 52, known...

-Scroll.in And what that tells us about how agriculture is faring in Punjab. The professor will not forget 2015 easily. A scientist at Ludhiana’s Punjab Agriculture University, he has been studying cotton for 15 years. But what he saw this year was entirely unfamiliar. It started with the rains. Punjab saw downpours during the normally dry months of March and April. It rained in June as well – a month when temperatures should have...

-The Statesman Koraput district is ahead of several others in meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goal, said May East, Scotland UN fellow, while addressing the Grow Your Own Food congress organised by Thread Siddharth village and Odisha Narisamaj at Kakirigumma here. This congress and Asian Ecovillage summit has been organised under the global discussions on how to implement these goals regionally and the discussion is also based on practical work conducted by...