-The Conversation Resource-intensive agriculture, despite its productivity, nevertheless has failed to feed the world's current population, never mind the nine billion people expected by 2050. This system that currently fails both people and planet is ripe for revision. We need to be more ambitious, to go beyond simply producing more. We need to produce more of what's good - not just cereal staples, but nutrition-dense foods - in ways that can prevent...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Drip-drop way to reaping profits-Santosh K Kiro
-The Telegraph Ranchi: Ranchi residents, who discovered in 2013 that Rs 500 equalled to not even a week's worth of vegetables, will welcome this piece of news. Year-round vegetable farming is a better catch than slippery fish, say Ramdaga villagers in Angara block, near Getalsud dam, 25km off the capital. Ramdaga villagers normally raised one paltry crop a year, fished at the Getalsud dam and came to Ranchi to work as manual...
More »Rice and shine -Dnyanesh Jathar
-The Week A revolutionary farming system is working wonders in Nalanda district Nalanda: If not for an agricultural technique known as SRI (system of rice intensification), Sumant Kumar of Darveshpura in Bihar's Nalanda district would have remained a faceless farmer. In 2012, with the help of the state agriculture department, he tried out SRI on an acre that usually bore only modest yields. It worked, and Sumant got a bumper harvest. An...
More »GM Crops-What's all the fuss about -Nikhil Inamdar
-The Business Standard A quick recap of the intensely fractured debate on GM crops and what the pro & anti arguments are. After nearly a decade of opposition, Environment Minister Veerappa Moily is finally expected to rule in favour of the contentious GM or genetically modified food crops in India. The Economic Times reports that this will "pave the way for the government to submit an affidavit in the Supreme Court agreeing...
More »Mumbai greenlights GM field trials -Jaideep Hardikar
-The Telegraph Nagpur: The Maharashtra government has given a slew of private companies permission to conduct field trials of genetically modified crops at state agriculture universities' farms, rejecting its dissenting agriculture minister's suggestion for a public debate first. Before this, no Indian state had allowed field trials of GM crops since October last year, when a Supreme Court-appointed expert panel recommended a 10-year moratorium on such trials - though the court has...
More »