-The Hindu The country’s hybrid seed model for cotton favours seed companies over farmers Genetically Modified (GM) pest resistant Bt cotton hybrids have captured the Indian market since their introduction in 2002. These now cover over 95% of the area under cotton, with the seeds produced entirely by the private sector. India’s cotton production in 2019 is projected as the highest ever: 354 lakh bales. Bt cotton’s role in increasing India’s cotton...
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seeds of Hope -Harish Damodaran
-The Indian Express India’s premier farm research and education institute has a full-time director after nearly four years. It is an institution whose blockbuster varieties account for more than 95% of the country’s Rs 32,800-crore annual basmati rice export revenues, nearly half of its total wheat area, and a quarter of that sown under mustard. Yet, the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI, better known as Pusa Institute) has an annual research budget...
More »Farm Pollution: Happy seeder produces not-so-happy results on ground -Anju Agnihotri Chaba
-The Indian Express Area under paddy stubble burning in Punjab up despite number of machines almost doubling. Jalandhar: Punjab farmers have sown 4.50 lakh hectares (lh) wheat area this time using Happy seeders. This is nearly 13% of the total 35.08 lh planted under the rabi cereal crop in the state. Not bad, it would seem, for a relatively new technology, which allows wheat to be directly seeded in combine-harvested paddy fields...
More »Reset and refocus -Amartya Lahiri
-The Indian Express Impression that government prioritises non-economic agenda over development must be addressed India is now well and truly in the middle of a socio-economic upheaval. The economy has been weakening for a couple of years now. The social upheaval is new but its seeds have been fermenting for a while. The danger here is that the social and economic sides of an economy are not divorced from each other....
More »Onion shortage: Here's why farmers gained little from record price rise -Dilip Kumar Jha
-Business Standard Farmers across the country have suffered a double whammy this year - first, their crop from last season was spoilt by floods, and then onion yield also dropped due to moisture in fields Lasalgaon: Raghunath Sawant, an onion farmer from Niphad taluka in Maharashtra’s Nashik district, is a worried man. And, he is not alone. Despite onion prices hitting Rs 130 a kg in the wholesale market, Sawant has not...
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