While Governor M K Narayanan has also put the weight of his office behind the growing concern over farmer suicides in West Bengal, the Mamata Banerjee government seems determined to play these down. In Burdwan, the state’s rice bowl, where 18 of the 27 deaths have been reported in the past four months, the district administration has been approaching families of victims for written statements saying the suicides had nothing to...
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Cooperatives central to fighting hunger, stresses UN agency
-The United Nations Cooperatives and producer organizations will be increasingly important in efforts to eliminate hunger and reduce poverty, the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said today. “FAO needs strong cooperatives and producer organizations as key partners in the effort to eliminate hunger for some 925 million people, and to respond to the many challenges that face our world today,” said Director-General José Graziano da Silva. He told...
More »More milk co-operatives can remove poverty: Dr V Kurien
-DNA The Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF) can help free poor people from poverty, announced Dr V Kurien, father of the milk federation in the country. “It is a testimony to the strength of the co-operation that KMF has become India’s second largest dairy cooperative. Despite its achievements, the fact remains that there are still many poor people in rural areas. I believe that the solution to this is to set up more...
More »Livestock disease alert in N-E by Roopak Goswami
The region that consumes 50 per cent of the country’s pork is staring at an outbreak of classical swine flu and a host of other dreaded livestock diseases in the coming two months, experts have predicted. The project directorate on animal disease monitoring and surveillance, Bangalore, has warned that four livestock diseases, including haemorrhagic septicaemia, black quarter, foot-and-mouth disease and classical swine fever, will hit the Northeast in February-March. The directorate, which...
More »ICAR forms panel to unravel mystery of Monsanto gene in ‘indigenous’ Bt cotton by Sandip Das
The Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) will set up an expert committee to look into patent violation issues concerning Bikaneri Narma, which was claimed to be the country’s first indigenous public sector-bred Bt cotton (genetically modified) seed variety. Bikaneri Narma Bt Cotton also promoted as ‘completely indigenous Bt variety’ was developed by Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR), Nagpur, and University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, along with Indian Agricultural Research...
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