-Grain.org "We take care of the cow and the cow takes care of us," says Marayal, a farmer in Thalavady, Tamil Nadu. Her two cows produce 6 to 10 litres of milk a day, which she sells for 30-40 cents per litre. Across India, there are millions of backyard dairy farmers like Marayal. Each owning just one or two cows, these farmers supply millions more families and hundreds of thousands of informal...

-The Hindu Bangalore is doing its bit for the desi cow as Harshini Vakkalanka discovers Bangalore: Desi cow ghee in earthen pots, fresh butter, sweetened hung curd, kalakand, basundi, rasamalai and rasagolla, kulfi, jamun rabadi, ladoo malai or motichoor ladoo; these may seem like the bane of every health-freak in the country not to mention diabetics but that's just the point. These desi cow milk sweets, made at Swarg Foods, a Bangalore-based organisation...

-The Business Standard The Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee law allows mandis to remain in the grip of a middlemen cartel, with clear links to politicians who run the governments Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi has, in effect, told chief ministers of party-ruled states that if food inflation is to be controlled, as many items as possible must be got out of the purview of the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act. For the time...

-The United Nations About 70 per cent of new diseases infecting humans in recent decades have come from animals, the United Nations food agency today reported, warning that it is getting easier for diseases jump species and spread as the population, agriculture and food-Supply Chains grow. The ongoing expansion of agricultural lands into wild areas, coupled with a worldwide boom in livestock production, means that "livestock and wildlife are more in contact...

-The Indian Express Food inflation owes largely to agricultural markets being regulated by outdated laws. The RBI governor, Raghuram Rajan, has a difficult task this week. He has to decide whether to keep interest rates constant or raise them - bearing in mind the possible taper of the US Fed's bond buying programme, a decline in industrial production and a rise in inflation. The sharp increase in consumer price-based inflation, to more...