The 50-year-old farmer knew from experience that his onion crop was doomed when torrential rains pounded his fields throughout September, a month when the Indian monsoon normally peters out. For lack of modern agricultural systems in this part of rural India, his land does not have adequate drainage trenches, and he has no safe, dry place to store onions. The farmer, Arun Namder Talele, said he lost 70 percent of...

The countrywide share of corporate retail in food distribution tripled in the past four years when retail food prices showed the greatest increase. THE dramatic increase in food inflation over the past two years has been associated with several surprises. One major surprise has been how the top economic policymakers in the country have responded to it. The initial response was one of apparent disbelief, followed very quickly by the...

The class bias in government policy is clear in the decision to release a small amount of foodgrain in the open market to tackle inflation. MOST people would agree that there is a strong element of speculation underlying the current inflation and that forward trading contributes to it. Yet the government, though it has banned forward trading in certain commodities under public pressure, is curiously reluctant to see this point....

Even as the price of onions remained high in domestic retail markets, the National Cooperative Consumers Federation of India (NCCF) on Monday urged the government to suspend the import of the vegetable for 10 days, by when the prices are expected to fall due to better arrivals. “The recent import of onions from China and Pakistan has created panic among our farmers, and many of them have started harvesting the crop...

The Bihar government has launched an "organic farming promotion programme" for the cultivation of organic crops in all the districts of the state. The government has decided to develop 38 "organic grams (organic villages)" for which a sum of Rs 255 crore has been sanctioned for five years. Some of these villages are: Dahour (Patna), Sartha (Nalanda), Belsand (Gopalganj), Gaighat Jaata (Muzaffarpur), Rajapaakar (Vaishali) and Narpatganj (Araria). This programme is being run...