-Down to Earth   Buy an Indian breed from Australia In June last year, we visited Malaysia on the invitation of the country’s oldest and most active consumer action group, The Consumer Association of Penang, to study the livestock production systems and to advise on how these can be transformed into more sustainable and less industrial farming systems. The past 40 years of aggressive industrial growth in Malaysia has seen small-scale peasant agriculture and...

-The Hindustan Times With delayed and scanty monsoon posing a threat to the agriculture output in the country, the Centre has reached out to states to lend a support to their contingency employment generation plans. Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh has written to all chief ministers assuring them that his ministry is “open to a revision in current year’s labour budget” to meet any increased demand in employment (under MGNREGA) in...

-PTI Irked by misuse of subsidy, the Centre has directed state governments to take firm steps to curb illegal diversion of fertilisers like urea to non-farm sectors, especially in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Haryana. "Instances of illegal diversion of fertilisers to other industries has come to our notice. We have written to chief secretaries of the states for initiating action against persons involved in smuggling of fertilisers with the help of central/state enforcement...

-PTI India’s monsoon, vital for Asia’s third-largest economy, has been 22% deficient till June 26, official data showed, adding to the government’s worries and prompting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to consult key aides on measures to tone up the economy on Wednesday. In a revised forecast, the Met department predicted the rains would be 96% of the long-term average, lower than its April forecast of 99%. Rainfall is considered normal if...

-The Times of India The UPA is likely to rejig the Sonia Gandh-led National Advisory Council(NAC) with four members of the government think-tank for social sector reforms — Jean Dreze, M S Swaminathan, Harsh Mander and Madhav Gadgil — being dropped at the end of their second year tenure. Dreze, an economist and one of the most prominent faces of the NAC, who had strongly advocated for a universal food security, had...