Buoyed by bumper production estimates this year, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar today favoured export of certain commodities like non-Basmati rice, sugar and onion to protect the interests of the farming community. “Generally we feel, we should take a total liberalised approach on export of certain items...Farmers are raising concern that prices of some commodities are going down,” Pawar told reporters here. Citing onion case as an example, Pawar said farmers, who were...

An experiment by Indian agriculture scientists points to the enormous effect global warming could have on the fragrant Basmati rice. Basmati, Sanskrit for the fragrant one, may lose not just its aroma, the famous long grains may get shorter, say scientists. H Pathak, principal investigator of Indian Agricultural Research Institute's Climate Change Challenge Programme, told TOI the Tarawari Basmati grown in research fields in Delhi did not grow long enough and...

Warning against high inflationary trends, United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has asked developing countries not to take short-term policy measures like export curbs to contain food prices. Developing countries should "carefully examine the implications of high food prices and not to take any policy actions that might appear useful in the short term but could have harmful, longer-term effects or even aggravate the situation", the UN body said, while...

The heat generated by the high food inflation may force the government to go slow, or even drop, some of its key proposals to open up the country's food and fertiliser sectors, experts say. Decontrolling sugar and urea and freeing up some farm exports are some of the proposals the government may not touch in the coming days, they say. The proposal on foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail may also...

The recent spike in vegetable prices, due partly to erratic supplies, could well have been averted if the novel concept of “relay cropping” in vegetable farming had become popular. This system allows growing three to seven crops of different vegetables on the same patch of land over a period to ensure a steady and regular flow of vegetables to markets. This innovative approach, significantly, has been conceived and successfully put into practice...