Agrarian crisis continued in Bengal with farmers continuing to commit suicide after failing to sell their crops. The latest such incident was reported from Malda district in North Bengal, police said. Dayal Chandra Burman a middle-aged peasant committed suicide on Sunday morning at Gajole block in Malda district after he failed to repay Rs 30,000 taken as loan from moneylenders for paddy cultivation. He failed to sell his crops for the...

Madhya Pradesh accounts for nearly 40 per cent of the total area under certified organic farming in the country. Though most of it is due to cotton fields, the state has an immense potential to bring even Food crops under organic cultivation.   What may help the state’s cause is that agriculture is already organic by default in many tribal-dominated districts because farmers either don't have the resources to use chemical fertilizers...

Farmers across the country are entitled to get Rs 1,080 a quintal (100kg) asminimum support price for paddy. But surprisingly, a team from the Centre that visited Bihar and Uttar Pradesh last week found that theFood Corporation of India (FCI) was paying nearly 30% less. With little procurement taking place in these states, farmers have been left with no option but to go for distress sale. The result: In procurement centres...

While Governor M K Narayanan has also put the weight of his office behind the growing concern over farmer suicides in West Bengal, the Mamata Banerjee government seems determined to play these down. In Burdwan, the state’s rice bowl, where 18 of the 27 deaths have been reported in the past four months, the district administration has been approaching families of victims for written statements saying the suicides had nothing to...

-The Deccan Chronicle   India needs to have a proper set of protocols and a credible regulatory mechanism to address issues related to genetically modified crops, according to Abhijit Sen, member of the Planning Commission. Mr Sen was addressing a gathering at the inaugural day of the two-day international seminar on ‘Biotechnology in Indian agriculture: performance, potential and concerns’ here on Wednesday. He said that the attempt to introduce Bt brinjal failed because...