-The Hindu Adoption of high production technology and cultivation of high yielding varieties have put tremendous pressure on soil nutrient reserve in the country leading to a great imbalance in nutrient status in the soil. A large chunk of soil in the country has been rendered deficient in micronutrients, which is one of the major reasons that crops have stopped responding to fertilizers, according to Dr. M Anandaraj, Director of Indian Institute...

-The New Indian Express   Most people would have been shocked to read the year-end report that India has been ranked 63rd, much below countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, on the Global Hunger Index (GHI), a yardstick used by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) to comprehensively measure global hunger. The index is calculated as an average of three indices-undernourishment, underweight children and low child mortality rate-and is measured on a...

-The Hindu Bangalore is doing its bit for the desi cow as Harshini Vakkalanka discovers Bangalore: Desi cow ghee in earthen pots, fresh butter, sweetened hung curd, kalakand, basundi, rasamalai and rasagolla, kulfi, jamun rabadi, ladoo malai or motichoor ladoo; these may seem like the bane of every health-freak in the country not to mention diabetics but that's just the point. These desi cow milk sweets, made at Swarg Foods, a Bangalore-based organisation...

-The Indian Express Kutch (Gujarat): Bhajan Singh, 62, remembers the time curious villagers turned up to see a borewell his father Gopal Singh had dug up. The year was 1969 and it was the first time Sumrasar village, near Bhuj in Kutch district, had had a borewell. Few had ever seen it work, as they depended entirely on rainwater for the barely one crop they harvested a year. Originally from Pakistan, Gopal...

-The Indian Express Agricultural GDP is underestimated due to inaccurate non-cereal data. It started with a mundane question: what is the chicken population in India? There are glaring inconsistencies in the available data. The National Sample Survey Organisation's (NSSO's) surveys show a 20 per cent annual growth of chicken consumption between 2005 and 2010. But according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the production of chicken meat only rose 10 per...