Dr Howarth E Bouis, director of HarvestPlus, is a doctorate from Stanford University. He is promoting biofortification within the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, agricultural research and nutrition community in various countries. What is biofortification of crops? Biofortification is a process where plant breeders explore crop genetic diversity in seed banks and create a crop that is rich in specific micronutrients. There are two ways to biofortify crops—conventional plant breeding and...

The Italian phrase "lascia il tempo que trova" (it leaves the air it finds) does a better job of describing Pranab Mukherjee's budget than India's corporate media would ever dare to do. To put it mildly, the budget this year, is yet again, an utter disappointment for the food and agriculture sectors. To begin with, flagship schemes like the midday meals and the Integrated Child Development Services did not, unlike in...

Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee made sure to defer to the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council's priorities as he presented the Union budget for 2011-2012 on Monday. The Minister took care to mention that the Food Security Bill, the NAC's top priority, was almost ready and would be brought before Parliament later this year. He also took on board the NAC's concerns on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme...

This is a collection of 45 select articles written by M.S. Swaminathan over the past 20 years. Arranged in six sections, they cover ‘sustainable development in Indian agriculture', ‘technology and evergreen revolution', ‘sustainable food security', ‘agrarian crisis', ‘WTO and Indian farmers', and ‘shaping India's agricultural destiny'. As Jeffrey Sachs says in his foreword, Swaminathan had “recognised already in the early days of India's green revolution that the new breakthroughs could create...

In his general budget for 2011-12, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee has announced an increase in allocation for the Mahatama Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) of Rs10,000 crore to Rs58,000 crore.The finance minister has proposed an identical hike for the Bharat Nirman scheme, and also proposed to give Rs3000 core to the national Agricultural Development board, NABARD.Mukherjee also said the government has decided to index the wage rates notified...