-The Hindu Business line India’s North-East, comprising eight States, is largely unspoilt by modern agricultural practices, which involve heavy use of agro-chemicals and chemical fertilisers. For this precise reason, the region is a natural choice for promoting organic farming in the country. Sikkim, the FIRst organic State in India, has already shown the way for the other States in the region. According to the estimates available with the Agricultural and Processed...

-Livemint.com According to govt data, the output of foodgrains is 11.9 million tonnes higher than the average production of 129.7 million tonnes between 2012-17 New Delhi: India’s foodgrain production during the rain-fed kharif season is estimated at a record 141.6 million tonnes in 2018-19, raising chances that wholesale crop prices will continue to hover low ahead of crucial elections in states like Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. The FIRst advance estimate of crop...

-FIRstpost.com Ludhiana: Free meals, payment in advance, free liquor to ease aching limbs after a hard day’s work. Migrant labour in Punjab, mainly from Bihar, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh, the mainstay of the state’s agriculture sector, has never had it so good. The problem, however, is the decreasing availability of this labour. Ask Baljinder Singh, a farmer with a 10-acre holding in Dakha village. Come sowing season in mid-June, Baljinder...

-The Hindu Budgetary support must be strengthened to make Ayushman Bharat a success Ayushman Bharat has been rolled out as a health protection scheme that will provide guaranteed access to treatment that is free at the point of delivery to about 40% of the population selected on the basis of censused socio-economic indicators. It is the essential FIRst step on the road to universal health coverage, although it has been launched by...

-The Hindu FIRst detected in Karnataka only in May this year, the fall armyworm, a native of the Americas, has already spread as far as West Bengal and Gujarat, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. Priyanka Pulla reports on the deficiencies in India’s quarantine regime It is a hot day in September, and two men are prising open the leaves of maize in a field in Karnataka’s Chikkaballapur district. The...