-Down to Earth The food most associated with biodiversity loss also tends to also be connected to unhealthy diets across the globe As the global population has doubled to 7.8 billion in about 50 years, industrial agriculture has increased the output from fields and farms to feed humanity. One of the negative outcomes of this transformation has been the extreme simplification of ecological systems, with complex multi-functional landscapes converted to vast swaths...

-Livemint.com * As consumers bear the brunt of high food costs, growers see no benefit. How long will this strange dynamic last? * Many lower income consumers are also not enrolled under the federal food security scheme. An estimate suggests that over 100 million eligible Indians are excluded Ramesh Pangal calls it a season of miseries: Farmers running around with vegetables to find a buyer; leaving tomatoes to rot in the field; dumping...

-Down to Earth Highest rice acreage in six years, more farmers in farms, a bounty monsoon and an expected bumper harvest don't enthuse farmers as their earning dips   It is a piece of news that everybody would love to cheer about, except those who made this possible. The current kharif season is exceptional. In comparison to last year, over eight million more hectares of farms are under cultivation this season. There are more...

-Press release by the Right to Food Campaign dated 17th August, 2020 The Budget Session of Parliament was curtailed due to Covid-19 and the sudden imposition of lockdown and since then the Parliament has not been in session. Therefore, several civil society organisation networks and peoples’ movements, have organised an online Janta Parliament from 16th August to 21st August on a variety of social issues ranging from health to civil liberties. In...

-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...