-MuslimMirror.com Afghanistan’s mineral wealth might be able to help the Taliban to bankroll its developmental plans. Even when the American occupation of Afghanistan was in full steam and apart from the fighting there were mainly reports of the on-going fighting, yet there were secret reports, which spoke of the vast mineral wealth which Afghanistan possesses. There were further reports, which reported questioningly the Americans taking planeloads of soil from various regions of...

-Newsclick.in Slope destabilisation, soil erosion and sequestered carbon loss have increased, according to Ravi Chopra. Noted Dehradun-based environmentalist Ravi Chopra recently resigned as the chairman of the Supreme Court (SC)-appointed High Powered Committee (HPC) overseeing the environmental impact of the Narendra Modi government’s Rs 12,000 crore 889-km Char Dham highway widening project in Uttarakhand.  The Char Dham project, one of the largest road-widening projects in the Himalayan region, intends to connect the four...

-Centre for Science and Environment * Releases new report that presents irrefutable evidence of the benefits of non-chemical agriculture * Yesterday’s Budget promises to promote chemical-free natural farming, but it is a half-hearted promise at best, as no separate allocation has been made in it, says CSE * CSE’s asks: Invest in organic and natural farming. Make it a mass movement New Delhi, February 2, 2022: “Despite the push given to it through periodic...

-Centre for Science and Environment India has one of the highest arable land areas in the world1 with a net sown area of 140.1 million hectares (ha).2 Agriculture and allied sectors employ 54.6 per cent of the total workforce in India (2019–20).3 The country successfully adopted the Green Revolution in the 1960s—an input and chemical-intensive agriculture model—to overcome food scarcity by use of high yield varieties, pesticides, fertilizers, and agriculture machinery...

-Down to Earth Eligibility threshold for FPOs should be reduced or support provided to meet the criteria, experts feel Farmer producer organisations (FPO) figure prominently in government policies and the ambitious plan to double farmers’ income by 2022. But funds remain elusive for these bodies, according to a recent analysis.  Just 1-5 per cent of FPOs have received funding under central government schemes introduced to promote them in the last seven years, the...