-Firstpost.com Chandigarh: With extensive rice farming in Punjab taking an increasing toll on groundwater reserves and soil health, government agencies are now asking farmers to diversify into profitable allied trades including dairy and pig farming and fisheries. Farmers are also being asked to cultivate crops other than paddy. Farmers in different parts of the state have started growing other, more profitable crops alongside rice. In a break with the fertiliser and pesticide-driven...

-The Indian Express Out of the 62 pesticide poisoning deaths reported in Maharashtra last year, 21 were in Yavatmal district alone, which also registered over 800 hospitalisation cases. Nagpur: Maharashtra has banned the sale of five moderately-to-extremely toxic insecticides and cancelled the licences of six companies for the current kharif season, as part of steps to prevent the recurrence of last year’s pesticide inhalation accidents that caused the deaths of 62 farmers...

-TheNewsMinute.com Water is a resource that will never run out, they say; but its scarcity has been the undoing of many families in Kadiri, a town in Andhra Pradesh’s Anantapur district. Anantapur district has seen varying degrees of drought for many years now. Barren lands and wilting crops are a common sight in these parts. The sun beats down on you and wears you out, and there is no water in...

-Livemint.com According to Nafed, the central agency assigned to procure directly from farmers at government-set MSP, 6.34 million tonnes of pulses and oilseeds were purchased from about 3.5 million farmers till 22 June New Delhi: The central government procured a record Rs29,070 crore worth of pulses and oilseeds from farmers at minimum support prices (MSPs) in the 2017-18 crop season, arresting what could have been a sharper fall in wholesale prices. The procurement...

-Down to Earth Much of the groundwater in Malwa, Punjab has chemicals exceeding permissible limits, putting children at risk of a blood disorder Groundwater in Malwa region of Punjab is unfit for drinking and irrigation, according to a study published recently in the Arabian Journal of Geosciences, the official journal of the Saudi Society for Geosciences. The study also warns that children in the region are highly vulnerable to methemoglobinemia, a blood...