-The Economic Times KOLKATA: West Bengal's agriculture department has decided to encourage farmers to cultivate extinct varieties of rice is drawing up plans to create a market for them. The department is also helping farmers to adopt organic farming methods. Agriculture department officials said that these indigenous varieties of rice, which are also known as folk rice, have properties which make them suitable for cultivating in particular regions and are also highly...

-The Hindu ‘TK Kathir’ is cultivated in accordance with organic farming methods in Ernakulam village KOCHI: A local brand of organic rice named after a farmer’s grandfather and promoted by a political leader. But there is more to ‘TK Kathir’ than just that. Grown by T.D. Robert, a relatively newly converted paddy farmer of Kanjoor village, the brand was much sought after at the recently concluded organic Onam Mela organised by the Jaiva...

-The Hindu Business Line As a part of the government’s push, States adjoining the Himalayan range will be encouraged to go completely organic Ahmedabad: Parshottam Rupala, the Union Minister of State for Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, informed that the government is increasingly focusing on organic farming to boost production of nutritionally rich agri produce. As a part of the government’s push, States adjoining the Himalayan range will be encouraged to go all organic,...

-The Hindu Business Line At an organic market in Odisha, middle-class consumers get to interact with the producers of their food and appreciate traditional knowledge systems One Sunday morning in January, I visited an organic produce market located amidst dense bougainvillea creepers and rows of trees, on the grounds of the six-decade-old Christian Hospital in Bissamcuttack, a town in western Odisha’s Rayagada district. In policy and public imagination, Odisha, particularly its western districts...

-The Hindu Fifty years since the Green Revolution, the architect of the reform highlights the crisis facing Indian agriculture today It is 11 years since agronomist M.S. Swaminathan handed over his recommendations for improving the state of agriculture in India to the former United Progressive Alliance government, at the height of the Vidarbha farmer suicides crisis, but they are still to be implemented. To address the agrarian crisis and farmers’ unrest across...