Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today said the decision on free power to the farm sector will be discussed in the cabinet but rejected the Planning Commission's contention that it was responsible for the alarming depletion of groundwater in the state. "The farmers of Punjab have been using ground water for the crops and the state has helped whole country to overcome food crises many times," Badal said, reacting to...

The Centre's decision to raise the minimum support price (MSP) sharply for pulses, moderately for coarse cereals and oil seeds, and not at all for rice and cotton (the nominal hike for rice merely rolls in the bonus offered last year) is right, in the conventional sense. The signal against increasing acreage for rice this kharif is sound, given the huge stocks with the government. The signalling is right, too,...

With the shortage of migrant workers in Ludhiana, the farmers here are a worried lot and flock the railway station to find labourers to work in their fields. The labours basically migrate from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh and work in the farms in Punjab. The farmers waiting outside the railway station in search of labourers said they are having a tough time convincing the labourers to work in their fields. The farmers are...

The reported decision of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs taken at a meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, to keep the minimum support price of cotton unchanged for kharif season 2010-11 has left three million growers of the state unhappy. Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti president Kishore Tiwari said, "The prices were last revised in 2008-09 and during election year it were raised to Rs 3,000 a quintal more...

Indian agriculture was mostly organic before the advent of the Green Revolution. However, the widespread adoption of nutrient-responsive and high-yielding varieties greatly promoted the use of inorganic fertilisers, weedicides and insecticides. The compulsion to grow more for food security has led farmers to overlook food quality norms and an indiscriminate use of natural resources. Based on three principal factors viz., mixed cropping, crop rotation and use of organic fertilizers, the National...