-Down to Earth World is moving towards natural capital as a measure of economic growth After using gross domestic product, or GDP, as the universal measurement of economy for six decades, the world has begun looking beyond this gold standard for measuring a country’s economy. On May 25, 10 African countries agreed to incorporate their natural capital, or value of their natural resources, into their national accounts to make better economic decisions. The...

Basagonda adopted INM system to cultivate papaya Around three years ago when Basagonda Muttappanavar decided to join his father in farming, he had a dream: to bring about a radical change in farming methods. Confident Being the son of a farmer, the 27-year-old agriculture graduate was confident of turning the not-so-profitable land into a dividend-rich farm. Basagonda decided to cultivate Taiwan-786 variety of papaya on 4 acres of their 45-acre farm at Managuli village,...

Veteran agricultural scientist and alumnus of Harvard and Berkeley Universities, Dr Peter Kenmore was in Mumbai for NABARD’s 30th anniversary lecture on ‘Future of Global Agriculture: Challenges and Opportunities for India.’ This United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization India representative spoke to Yogesh Pawar on the current scenario in agriculture. Some excerpts: There’s a lot of churn over GM technology in India. At a time when the country is grappling with...

The Government of India has formally launched the news Guidelines of the MGNAREGA based on the Mihir Shah Committee report. The news guidelines include many new works under conservation activities and it strengthens the hands of the village panchayats and gram sabhas. However, the list of works does not include the activities under the system of rice intensification (SRI) which encourages scientific method of paddy cultivation with better yield in...

Naseema Akhtar, 38, worries that her daily treks to collect clean water from the mountain springs around her village of Bonpora, in Kashmir’s Kupwara district, are getting longer. She is already doing more than seven km every day. "The higher up you go, the cleaner the water is likely to be, but there is a limit to how far one can climb to fetch a pitcher of water," she told IPS....