-TheWire.in With pending dues of Rs 22,000 crore, sugarcane farmers in the country continue to suffer as the Centre’s package to ‘address the current crisis’ proves thoroughly inadequate and misdirected. The Wire takes a deep dive into the sugarcane crisis. Shamli: On a hot May afternoon, a long queue of tractor trolleys loaded beyond capacity with sugarcane, are lined up outside the Upper Doab Sugar Mills in Shamli district – in...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The 10-day farmers' strike in northern and western India ended on Sunday without any clear gains for the agitators or a significant impact on prices. During the " gaon bandh" agitation, the farmers had boycotted wholesale markets and tried to sell their produce directly. They were demanding a minimum support rice that would leave them with a 50 per cent profit and the waiver of farm loans. The Rashtriya...

-The Hindu The court-ordered clean-up in the textile town has managed to mitigate ill-effects of industrial pollution to a large extent. A similar remediation effort, involving the government and stakeholders, is needed in other parts of Tamil Nadu, where groundwater has been so contaminated that farming is not possible anymore On a sunny June morning, two men are spotted fishing close to the Orathupalayam dam in Erode district. A rather ordinary act in...

-The Hindu Research shows that they alter rivers and their fish communities drastically It seems to stand to reason that small dams cause less environmental problems than large ones. But the first study on small hydropower projects in India proves that they cause as severe ecological impacts as big dams, including altering fish communities and changing river flows. Such hydroprojects, which usually generate less than 25 megawatts of power and consist of a...

-The Indian Express Area under ‘unapproved’ herbicide-tolerant hybrids likely to fall this year Nagpur: Last year, almost 35 lakh packets of genetically modified (GM) cotton seeds, incorporating unapproved ‘herbicide-tolerance’ or HT technology, were bought and planted by farmers across India. But this time round, state governments seem better prepared to curb this illegal cultivation, even as sowing of cotton is over in northwest India and is about to commence in the...