-The Hindu A NABARD survey says middlemen funded by banks have kept growers captive to high-interest loans Jammu: Kashmir's acres of undulating Apple orchards may soon be waste lands, a survey by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) accessed by The Hindu shows. The Rs. 4,000-crore industry has been brought to its knees by a network of middle-order market functionaries comprising pre-harvest contractors (PHCs), commission agents (CAs) and wholesalers...

-DNA You may be cursing when you pay a high price for Kashmiri apples, wondering what share of the moneyorchard owners would receive. But in reality, the apple growers wouldn't be even knowing the price at which the fruit is sold in the mainland, leave alone reaping profits. Then, where does the money go? Into the pockets of commission agents, who, sitting in Delhi or any of the major cities, exploit and...

Nagpur orange’s survival hinges precariously on its return to sustainable cultivation. Farmers have woken up to this, but will the government? A beaming Uday Wath hugs the trunk of his sturdy, disease-free Nagpur orange tree. All around him are trees drooping with the fruit, large and healthy. The tree trunks are singularly free of both telltale gummosis wounds and bluish white bordeaux paste, the chemical meant to prevent them. Not more than...

-The Financial Express   Bhim can't understand what he's done wrong.   Before dawn every day he joins hundreds of wholesale traders at Delhi's Azadpur Mandi, a sprawling, chaotic market where trucks blare Bollywood music, porters haul huge brown sacks of fruit and vegetables and hawkers ply tea and cigarettes. His own trade is in rosy red apples, laced with calcium carbide. Bhim says he's been adding chemicals to his apples for years to artificially ripen...

RV Gumaste, a member of Kirloskar’s project team that set up Bellary’s first iron-making unit in 1994, has never seen such times since he first moved base from Pune 17 years ago. “We will take the burden for our regular employees for some time. But how long?” says the industry veteran, who was appointed Managing Director of Kirloskar Ferrous Industries Ltd in July 2003. The Rs 1,100-crore company has 800...