-Livemint.com In 1986, Italian journalist Carlo Petrini was outraged when McDonald’s opened its first outlet in Rome. He saw this as a threat to Italy’s culinary culture. He led a protest against the global industrialization of food, which culminated in the slow food movement. Starting in Rome, the movement is now a worldwide phenomenon. Edited excerpts from an interview at the Indigenous Terra Madre in Shillong: * What are the key achievements...

-The Indian Express Vidarbha’s farmers have escaped the worst of drought this year and hope to gain from high arhar prices. Wardha (Maharashtra): About 95 km from Nagpur and to the left of National Highway-7 leading to Hyderabad is a 14-acre farm that is now the cynosure of many eyes. This field, at Daroda village in Hinganghat tehsil of Wardha district, radiates only green with no traces of white or brown dots —...

-Outlook Recent studies point to two areas where NREGS has had an impact — rural education and Naxalite conflict. "Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man."  This rather depressing assessment of the field is the opening sentence of Henry Hazlitt's classic primer, Economics in one lesson. In Hazlitt's view, most economists only measure the immediate impact of their policies. A good economist, Hazlitt contended, looks not merely...

-Hindustan Times Ludhiana: Farmers’ decision to go for paddy variety PUSA 44 this year, contrary to the advisory of agricultural experts, has led to delayed sowing of wheat across Punjab.   Farmers opted for PUSA 44, which takes 160 days to mature, instead of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR)-recommended varieties PR 121, 122, 123 and 124, which take 140-145 days to mature. PUSA 44 was preferred by them due to its higher...

-Business Standard Indian farming was transformed after the mid-60s, on a wave of new agri technology and allied changes, but the costs of this model can no longer be ignored or its addressing be postponed It was around the mid-1960s when the Paddock brothers, the ‘prophets of doom’, predicted that in another decade, recurring famines and an acute shortage of foodgrain would push India towards disaster.   Their prophecy was based on a...