-The Financial Express Every year, the onset of winter in Delhi unfailingly brings to the fore the burning of paddy residue in Punjab and Haryana, given the practice contributes significantly to the national capital’s air pollution woes, with severe consequences for public health. According to an IIT study, 17% of the PM 10 load and 26% of the PM 2.5 load in October-November in Delhi can be attributed to post-monsoon crop...

-The Hindu Business Line Price incentives for farmers should be followed up by better marketing infrastructure The Centre, while announcing the minimum support prices for the oncoming rabi season, has stuck to its policy of announcing moderate increases in the case of cereals, while promoting a shift towards pulses and oilseeds. MSP increases have moderated after 2013, after double-digit spurts that were the norm in the preceding four years. Hence, the rise...

-DNA India India is frittering away gains of the Green Revolution and fast turning into a net food importer In 2015-16, India imported Rs 1,402,680,000,000 or 1.40 lakh crore worth of agricultural commodities. This was more than three times the annual budgetary allocation for domestic agriculture. Well, if you think the increasing reliance on food imports in one year — 2015-16 — is merely an aberration, hold your breath. According to commodity...

-The Hindu Fifty years since the Green Revolution, the architect of the reform highlights the crisis facing Indian agriculture today It is 11 years since agronomist M.S. Swaminathan handed over his recommendations for improving the state of agriculture in India to the former United Progressive Alliance government, at the height of the Vidarbha farmer suicides crisis, but they are still to be implemented. To address the agrarian crisis and farmers’ unrest across...

-The Indian Express Agriculture education is in a poor state. ICAR must be revamped Although autarky on Indian farms is a distant dream, as the 71st year of Independence dawns, penury-ridden farmers are still committing suicide by the thousands— a consequence of decades of short-sightedness, while economists and scientists are still equating Food Sufficiency to farmer sustainability. The occasion merits introspection on the core issues of farmers’ distress. We must begin at the...