-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...

-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...

-The Hindu How Zero Budget Natural Farming could be the model for the future In early June, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu announced that the State would fully embrace Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF), a chemical-free method that would cover all farmers by 2024. Earlier in the year, he had revealed these plans at the meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Even though this revolution has been in the...

-TheWire.in Pesticide poisoning is the leading method of suicide among both men and women in the country. It is also the method that is easiest to prevent – by banning and removing highly hazardous ones from agricultural practice through legislation. The ban on highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs) currently being discussed in India will not only protect the environment and improve the public health but will also achieve another rarely acknowledged goal –...