Over 11,000 acres of land has been brought under organic Farming in Punjab and Haryana under a scheme sponsored by the Union Government. While 6,050 acres has so far come under organic Farming in Punjab, Haryana too is not lagging behind as 5,000 acre has been brought under organic Farming. To promote organic Farming in Punjab and Haryana, farmers are being provided technological inputs including training and farm-level advisory services according...

“Governments and international agencies urgently need to boost ecological Farming techniques to increase food production and save the climate,” said UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, while presenting the findings at an international meeting on agroecology held in Brussels on 21 and 22 June. Along with 25 of the world’s most renowned experts on agroecology, the UN expert urged the international community to re-think current agricultural...

His right thumb severed, Santosh Mondal didn’t know how he would harvest his crop. So he killed himself last night. The tragedy mirrors the desperation of not only a poor Murshidabad farmer but also of a state where politics revolves around Farming even if it does not make economic sense. The suicide over a digit that most take for granted becomes all the more stark against the backdrop that Santosh could have...

Investments in agriculture in developing countries can be structured in a way that they become an alternative to large-scale land acquisitions to ensure that small-scale farmers do not lose their land rights, according to the findings of a United Nations-backed study released today. International initiatives on agricultural investments should go beyond trying to minimize the negative impacts of large-scale land acquisitions and, instead, promote investment models that improve opportunities for...

An analysis of the remote sensing data collected by Nasa satellites on the changes in vegetation in India during the last 25 years has confirmed the bad news: The growth rate of foodgrain production in India has been stagnant in the last decade, which crop statisticians have been aware of for some time now. A nine-member team of scientists from Nasa, the Boston University and the Indian Institute of Tropical...