-The Hindustan Times The smog that nearly choked Delhi in November was caused due to the burning of post-harvest rice stalks in Punjab, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh. Every year, rice is harvested using combine harvesters, which leaves a residue in the field. Earlier, harvesting was done by hand and the people who worked on the fields would take out the stalks and use them as food for animals. This practice is...

-The Economic Times It has never happened since Independence. May be not even in the last 1,000 years what happened during October 2011-September 2012. India exported 10 million tonnes of rice, valued at around $6 billion, becoming the largest exporter of rice, replacing Thailand and Vietnam, generally the two largest exporters of rice. This is now known to many in rice circles. But what is little known is that in 2011-12, India also emerged...

-The Economic Times The government should liquidate wheat stocks through exports and sales in the open market and share the proceeds with farmers to raise their income levels, a government panel suggested. In its latest report to the agriculture ministry, the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), which recommends a minimum support price (MSP) for agriculture crops, is said to have maintained that there is no reason to lift the...

-The Times of India CHANDIGARH: As Nasa satellite images over the past few days show, Punjab is literally on fire. In the images, the state is pockmarked with red dots which correspond to blazes deliberately lit by farmers to get rid of their paddy stubbles after harvest. It's an environmentally disastrous practice that the state government has shown little urgency in tackling. Among the fallout of this mass-burning is smog that spreads...

Since early November, Delhi and large parts of North India have been enveloped in a thick, grey smog, sparking concerns and a debate on what is leading to the rising levels of air pollution. A January 2012 paper by Ridhima Gupta from the Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi is drawing linkages between the quality of air in the capital and agricultural practices during harvest season on farms in the neighbouring state...