-The Business Standard   How a law to conserve groundwater led to a better paid and better organised migrant workforce Ludhiana: For some years now, Punjab's fields have lain fallow through the searing dry heat of May; but come June's steamy humidity, small bands of lithe, slender men from Bihar fan out across the waterlogged paddy fields, transplanting rice saplings with fluid efficiency. Bihar's paddy planters have frequented Punjab since the 1960s when rice...

-The Telegraph   New Delhi: Four activists claimed today that an Intelligence Bureau report that has named them for campaigning against genetically-modified (GM) crops appears to have been influenced by foreign organisations promoting GM crops. The activists, who have been campaigning either for tighter regulatory mechanisms for the assessment of GM crops or for a ban on the introduction of GM crops in India, said the IB report appears to support the introduction...

-The Hindu   Gujarat Dalit women's cooperative is fighting for entitlement to land it has reclaimed VAUTHA (AHMEDABAD DISTRICT, Gujarat): It's early morning, but the summer sun is already beating down on the row of women busy with their hoes. In Gujarat, known for the cooperative dairy movement, a group of Dalit women farmers from Vautha village in Dholka block of Ahmedabad district are pioneering the demand for land entitlement, for a one of...

-Grist Media   The people of the Thar desert have their ways. This story unfolds over a year and recounts history through contemporary lives lived gently and with the land. It experiences first-hand the extraordinary old magic of growing lush crops in the desert. The land was the color of burnt caramel. It was flat and it was featureless: there was no tree in sight, no blade of grass, no ditch, no dune,...

-Down to Earth   Advance estimates by agriculture ministry project 0.8 million tonnes increase in production over earlier estimate despite freak weather event   The unseasonal rains and hail in March this year seem to have had little effect on overall crop production estimation. India is going to witness its highest foodgrain production of 264 milllion tonnes, according to the third advance estimates for 2013-14, released by the Union agriculture ministry on Friday. It...