-The Hindu Tiruchi: The farmers of Lalgudi block said absence of summer showers had brought down the growth of the green manure. There has been a growing awareness among farmers in raising green manure for enriching the fertility of the soil. A farmer of Peruvalanallur in Lalgudi block, V. Padmanabhan, a retired PWD Executive Engineer, said that he raised green manure — daincha — on 13 acres, for use in his paddy fields....

-The Hindu Without doubt, India needs to go forward with bio-safe agricultural practices, but the farmers need to be helped to make them sustainable Reshma religiously mixes cow dung and manure in the soil in her farm, hoping for a better yield at least this time around. Reshma is a 22-year old smallholder farmer in a village outside Hyderabad. She is a part of the growing army of farmers in India who...

-Livemint.com Pulses are important from the perspectives of food security, environmental sustainability and balanced nutrition Most pulses such as pigeon pea (tur dal), black gram (urad), green gram (mung), field beans (waal), moth beans (matki) and horse gram (kulith) are native to the Indian subcontinent and have been an integral part of our diet for centuries. However, the single-minded focus on cereals over the last 50 years—the green revolution in wheat and...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: A first of its kind study on the state of India’s small towns – those with a population of less than one lakh – has come up with a grim picture of these mushrooming urban settlements. Though the numbers of such towns have grown by 157 % -- from 2223 in 1961 to 5705 in 2011, they have “enormous backlogs” when it comes to basic infrastructure and socio-economic...

-Livemint.com The trends are perplexing since crop acreages till last week rose by an impressive 3.7 million hectares from the year ago The latest monthly bulletin from the ministry of chemicals and Fertilizers has a curious table on Kharif season fertilizer sales till August. The data shows that except MoP (muriate of potash), sales of other major Fertilizers fell from the year-ago period, deepening the mystery about agriculture inputs sales trends...