In 2010, subject to government approvals, Indian farmers will seed their fields with transgenic brinjals—brinjals with a genetic variant that, courtesy Monsanty-Mahyco Ltd and a clutch of agricultural universities, protect them from insects. But 14 years ago, Polumetla Ananda Kumar successfully planted the first Indian transgenic brinjals in a field in west Delhi. Then he promptly burnt the entire crop to the ground. Kumar, head of the National Plant Biotechnology Centre at...

There has been no let-up in the rising trend of food prices. For the week that ended on November 28, the wholesale price index for food articles rose 19.05 per cent over the corresponding period last year. A week earlier, it was at 17.47 per cent. Indeed, arresting the price rise of essential commodities has been a challenge to the government for quite some time now. Some recent developments have...

In a more realistic and less confusing picture of the situation, the new wholesale price data monitoring system introduced on Thursday revealed that inflation of food articles soared by 13.39 per cent year-on-year during the week ended October 24, mainly owing to a surge in potato and onion prices, even as inflation for primary articles declined by 0.11 per cent on a weekly basis. As per the new data collation system,...

Government policies in many developing countries which promote the planting of a narrow base of agricultural crops may hurt farmers in the long run, a United Nations human rights expert warned today. As a result of the global food crisis, developing countries “have massively reinvested in agriculture and have sought to provide farmers with the means of production they need to produce food,” Olivier de Schutter, the Special Rapporteur on...

Agriculture is not just a food producing machine but the backbone of the livelihood of 60 per cent of Indians. The extensive drought spotlights a situation of mass rural deprivation and a mindset that is insensitive to it. But there are some encouraging signs. What should be done to meet the challenge?  There are reports in financial newspapers that the ongoing drought affecting nearly 200 districts in the country may...