-IANS With the central and state governments, and even the National Green Tribunal (NGT), coming down heavily on stubble-burning in Punjab and Haryana, farmers in both the states say they have few options available to avoid burning the crop residue. With a bumper paddy crop expected in the two agrarian states this kharif season -- likely in excess of 22.5 million tonnes -- the crop residue that will be burnt by farmers...

-Hindustan Times Every year in October, farmers in northern India burn stubble due to lack of alternative ways for its disposal. This leads to heavy pollution in Delhi-NCR before Winters. This year too, as farmers begin to set stubble afire, HT travels to Punjab and Haryana for a ground report. Honking its way down the narrow Taraouri Road, in Haryana’s Karnal district, the 16-wheeler truck vanished into a dense cloud of...

-The Hindu Over the years we have lost over a lakh varieties of native rice. One district in Odisha is rediscovering some of them It is a balmy Winter morning when I meet Kamli Bataraa, an ebullient Adivasi farmer, at her home in Belugan, in southern Odisha’s Koraput district. There is a hum across the village from the threshing of just-harvested paddy. When I ask Kamli about the rice varieties she grows,...

-PTI Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh today urged states to chalk out their own strategy to achieve the target of doubling farmers' income by 2022. The centre has already come out with a four-volume report suggesting ways to boost farmers' income, which states will have to study and see how best it can be implemented in each state, he said. Not only productivity of various crops needs to be raised, but also...

-The Hindu Business Line At an organic market in Odisha, middle-class consumers get to interact with the producers of their food and appreciate traditional knowledge systems One Sunday morning in January, I visited an organic produce market located amidst dense bougainvillea creepers and rows of trees, on the grounds of the six-decade-old Christian Hospital in Bissamcuttack, a town in western Odisha’s Rayagada district. In policy and public imagination, Odisha, particularly its western districts...