We hear that endosulfan is banned globally and it is against Indian interests and that the European Union and the corporates are behind it. India is a big country and we do not know what happens in one area of the country or how New Delhi is responding to that. So let me try to walk you on this issue. I went to Kasargod as team member of Thanal, a...

Even as the highest ever harvest of wheat and rice is expected this year, callous administration is leading to rice literally going up in smoke in the Punjab. Tens of thousands of tons of rice stocked for the last five years in the open have now caught fire at a Punjab Agro storage area in Khamano, a large procurement market.   An incensed Supreme Court had in 2010 said if the government...

The upsurge in the use of the toxic pesticide endosulfan, targeted for prohibition by the international community, illustrates one of the dilemmas of intensive agriculture in Argentina and Latin America in general. "There is always a natural solution," insists farmer Alicia Alem, a member of an Argentine cooperative that produces cereal and forage crops without chemical fertilisers or pesticides. "In terms of wheat, for example, the cooperative gets exactly the same yield...

Endosulfan, a powerful 50-year-old insecticide sometimes called DDT’s “cousin,” was officially banned last week at an international pesticides meeting in Geneva. Partial exemptions were created for India, however; the chemical may be used on some crops there for up to 10 years. Many countries outlawed endosulfan long ago because it is dangerous to farmworkers, accumulates in the body, kills beneficial insects and persists in the environment. The United States is an...

The lush green Indian state of Kerala, advertised in travel brochures as "God’s Own Country", is at the center of a continuing battle in the country to secure an early ban on the use of the pesticide endosulfan. The Kerala government and activists say the pesticide has caused 4,000 victims in the state, through cancer, crippled limbs and babies born with deformities; 496 related deaths have been officially recorded. No scientist,...