Gujarat's business acumen and entrepreneurial zest is passé; the State's leap-frogging with 11 per cent agricultural growth, praised by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) last year, is old hat too. What is new is this: Gujarat may now export more ‘kesar', the famous Mango variety of the State, to West Asia than Maharashtra sells alphonso; the State has entered Goa market with cashew nut; and an Ahmedabad-based part-time...

“If one goes through the agricultural production history in the last six decades, the number of farmers opting out of agriculture, suicides of hundreds of farmers in the past 10 years, and shrinking cultivation lands are ample proof that our agriculture policy is totally wrong,” says Mr. R. Kulandaisamy a progressive farmer and liquid bio-fertilizer producer called Tari Biotech in Thanjavur. “Though policy makers and certain sections of the scientific fraternity...

A Tribal Development Fund (TDF) of NABARD covered 4000 families in four horticultural projects sanctioned in the state of Jharkhand during 2008-’09 and 2009-’10. Mr. K V Thomas, the Union Minister of State for Agriculture informed Rajya Sabha the other day on May 7, 2010, the last day of the budget session of the parliament in reply to an un-starred question from the member Mr. Parimal Nathwani. Mr. Nathwani had...

The growth rate of agriculture was three per cent and that of manufacturing was 4.5 per cent during the first three decades after independence. The growth rate for agriculture has slipped to 2.8 per cent while that for manufacturing has increased to 6.4 per cent during the last 15 years. Farmers continue to commit suicides across the country. The groundwater level is declining. The country has to import wheat, edible...

Conventional wisdom among many ecologists is that industrial-scale agriculture is the best way to produce lots of food while preserving biodiversity in the world's remaining tropical forests. But two University of Michigan researchers reject that idea and argue that small, family-owned farms may provide a better way to meet both goals. In many tropical zones around the world, small family farms can match or exceed the productivity of industrial-scale operations, according...