-The Hindu Business Line How ‘Protected Cultivation' can help prevent crop damage due to national disasters While the first green revolution managed to make the nation self sufficient the next round of reforms certainly needs to address the problems faced by today's farmers. According to statistics available on Indian Council of Agricultural Research, India reaped a record foodgrain production of 259.32 million tonnes (mt) in 2011-12. However, the output fell to 257.13...

-The New York Times AGIRIPALLI: In this belt of villages near the fertile Krishna River delta, much is as it has been for generations: The cotton soil is as black, the mango trees as heavy with fruit, the tobacco fields as fragrant and deeply green as ever. But there have been curious changes in recent months. An old temple has received an expensive renovation, complete with a new banquet hall, courtesy of...

-The Hindu GUDURU (KRISHNA): In Krishna district, considered the rice bowl of Andhra Pradesh, illiterate women leaders of agricultural labourers, engaged in paddy operations, have made a major contribution for better yield. The leader, known as ‘mestri' or ‘crop manager' among the womenfolk, attends the field with a rope in her hands. Having the sufficient number of workers, her duty involves calculation of the quantity of paddy saplings required for transplantation in...

-DNA The aim is to drive farmers out of agriculture and turn food production into industrial enterprise Some years ago, former President APJ Abdul Kalam was addressing students at an annual event organised by K Govindacharya's Bhartiya Swabhiman Andolan at Gulbarga in Karnataka. He exhorted students to work hard, educate themselves to become doctors, engineers, civil servants, scientists, economists and entrepreneurs. After he had ended his talk, a young student got...

-The Hindu Forest Dept. evicts them from land they cultivated in Dongarampur Raichur (Karnataka): These landless Dalit families are still searching for their land allotted under the Land Ceiling Act. Paramesh, a Dalit farmer from Dongarampur village in Raichur taluk, has been running from pillar to post for the last one year in Raichur to find his 2.26 acres of land that his father Jambappa had been allotted under the Act about...