Food-price inflation in India, Asia’s third-largest economy, may accelerate in the second half as farmers are paying 20 percent more to grow crops, according to the commission that helps set minimum farm-product prices. “The cost of production is going up very fast,” Ashok Gulati, chairman of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices, said in a telephone interview yesterday. “The labor cost has gone up dramatically in the past one year...

A hike in diesel and domestic LPG prices has been deferred for now, but an increase in petrol prices later this week looks imminent. An Empowered Group of Minister (EGoM) headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee was to meet on Wednesday to consider raising the diesel price by Rs 3-4 a litre and domestic LPG rates by Rs 20-25 per cylinder, but the meeting was deferred without assigning any reason. "No new...

The government plans to hike diesel prices by up to Rs 3 a litre soon after the assembly elections in five states are over next week, while an equivalent steep increase in petrol rates is also on card. "An Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) headed by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee is scheduled to meet on May 11 to mull on a hike in diesel prices," a top government official, refusing to...

The upsurge in the use of the toxic pesticide endosulfan, targeted for prohibition by the international community, illustrates one of the dilemmas of intensive agriculture in Argentina and Latin America in general. "There is always a natural solution," insists farmer Alicia Alem, a member of an Argentine cooperative that produces cereal and forage crops without chemical fertilisers or pesticides. "In terms of wheat, for example, the cooperative gets exactly the same yield...

Extreme poverty and clamour for firewood have forced some people in Nayagram into extreme occupations. One such is gathering kolmipoka, an insect with medicinal value After walking almost 30km along rutted roads since the morning, middle-aged Bonchu Nayek returns to his humble home, a two-room hut, as darkness descends on Nayagram—one of West Bengal’s poorest villages—with his day’s earning of Rs10. Nayek, whose forefathers were hunters, belongs to the Lodha-Sabar tribe. With...