-The Tribune Punjab: No doubt there is a pressing need to restore the fast deteriorating underground water balance in Punjab and parts of Haryana because of excessive withdrawals of water to meet the irrigation requirements of water-guzzling crops, particularly the rice crop. In Punjab available canal water hardly meets one-fourth of the water requirements of the agriculture sector and three-fourth water requirements are met through the pumping of underground water. In...

-Down to Earth Japan's Sapporo brewery patents Indian barley gene without giving benefit to farmers Ballia district, the easternmost part of Uttar Pradesh, is a flood-prone area that extends towards Bihar from the confluence of the Ganga and the Ghaghra. Over decades, its farmers, mostly marginal and small, have been cultivating barley, exchanging its seeds, improving the varieties and giving these to a government project to cull the best of the lot....

-Outlook Following are the highlights of interim budget 2014-15: Income tax rates kept unchanged 10 pc surcharge on 'super-rich' having annual income above Rs 1 crore to continue 10 pc surcharge on domestic corporates with income of Rs 10 crore Foodgrain production estimated at 263 million tonnes in 2013-14 Fiscal deficit at 4.6 pc in 2013-14...

-Oryza.com "Golden Rice will certainly be accepted one day. We are only trying to put pressure so it will be accepted earlier than later. Each second of the day a child dies unnecessarily." These are the words of Dr. Patrick Moore, Canadian ecologist and former director of Greenpeace, who is leading a campaign to make Golden Rice acceptable in the EU and across the world. What's surprising about Dr. Moore's words...

-Deccan Herald Instead of reducing the usage, molecular Breeders are conveniently dovetailing pesticides tolerance into GM crop varieties. It's a strange paradox. While the demand for organic food is rising unequivocally in the rich and developed countries as well as in the major developing countries, the use of chemical pesticides in agriculture is also growing at a phenomenal pace. The organic food industry in the US is relatively new. At a time when...