-The Hindu   Nabard's low-key financing scheme helps farmers reap a rich harvest Puducherry: A low-key financing scheme with a few innovations thrown in is driving big changes in the lives of several rural dairy farmers. One of the beneficiaries, Poongudi from Andayarpalayam, Thirubuvanai, is a happy woman. Her milch cows are healthier and milk production has improved in quantity and quality. "The cows do not fall ill often now. I have 10 cows and the...

-The Indian Express   Crops not enough to sustain them, farmers make it work with dairy, fishery, and implement hiring.   Jalandhar: When Harinder Singh of Bhamri village in Kadian block of Gurdaspur district graduated in 2008, his family wanted him to take up postgraduation and go abroad to improve his prospects. Harinder, however, had other ideas - he insisted that he would stay on in the village and follow the family occupation of...

-The Hindu "Farming is fascinating. The only thing is that it requires continuous hard-work and devotion without any distraction" says Mr. Barun Singh, a government bank manager-turned-farmer. Mr. Barun Singh maintains a vermi-composting unit in a portion of his 10 acre land. A dairy unit is attached to the composting unit so that the cattle dung can be easily utilized for the process without much labour involvement. Waste materials like dried leaves, rotten...

-The Indian Express Farmers welcome the stand of the government of India on the outright rejection of the recommendations of the technical expert committee to the Supreme Court, which suggested that a moratorium be imposed on field trials of GM crops. The SC shot down the proposal of an interim moratorium that would have strangled technology and innovation in the country. The moratorium would have also prevented Indian scientists and companies...

The economic crisis, the ecological crisis and the food crisis are a reflection of an outmoded and fossilised economic paradigm. It is a paradigm that grew out of mobilising resources for the war by creating the category of “growth”. It is rooted in the age of oil and fossil fuels. It is fossilised because it is obsolete, a product of the age of fossil fuels. If we have to address...