-The Guardian By shunning all but organic farming techniques, the Himalayan state will cement its status as a paradigm of sustainability Bhutan plans to become the first country in the world to turn its agriculture completely organic, banning the sales of pesticides and herbicides and relying on its own animals and farm waste for fertilisers. But rather than accept that this will mean farmers of the small Himalayan kingdom of 1.2 million people...

-The Hindu Business Line Dependence on the public distribution system (PDS) for buying essential commodities has gone up in recent times, according to the results of the latest household consumption survey. The National Sample Survey (NSS) 66th round, done in 2009-10, shows that consumption of rice, wheat, sugar and kerosene, sold through the PDS, rose both in urban and rural households, against the previous survey in 2004-05. The fact that the Government...

-The Economic Times AHMEDABAD: Insufficient rains during Monsoon has dropped Rabi acreage to a three year low of 29.3 lakh hectare, reveal state government data. The sowing is about 18% lesser than 37.35 lakh hectare in the previous Rabi season. This is second year in succession that winter sowing has declined. The kharif acreage in 2012 had also dropped by 7% to 81.71 lakh hectare because of rains that were about 27%...

-The Times of India The bad news is hidden inside the good news. Seemingly comforting headlines tell us that inflation has hit a three-year low, with wholesale price increases slowing down to 7.2% in December. But the common man will take a hit with prices of food products shooting up by 11.2% - the highest increase in almost two years. Unlike in previous years, when increasing food prices were attributed to...

-The Business Standard Govt's unbalanced food policy has disastrous results Consider the following discrepancies in the farm sector. The country is now the world’s largest exporter of rice, a crop grown with huge quantities of scarce water and heavily subsidised fertilisers. At the same time, it is the leading importer of pulses, which require very little water to grow and fortify the land with nitrogen to reduce the fertiliser need even...