-The Economic Times LONDON: Large areas of rich irrigated and fertile land in the Indo-Gangetic basin is being lost daily to salt damage, confirms the UN. Crop yield losses on salt-affected lands for wheat, rice, sugarcane and cotton grown on salt-affected lands could be 40%, 45%, 48%, and 63%, respectively. Employment losses could be 50-80 man-days per hectare, with an estimate 20-40% increase in human health problems and 15-50% increase in animal health...
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Digging wells, the solid scientific way -K Lakshmi
-The Hindu Chennai: Wondering which spot to dig for groundwater or what is the quality of water in the land you own? Are you still thinking of folks walking around with those peculiar ‘Y'-shaped twigs? It's not quite that way any more. We've become more scientific, we're using special tools to figure out where the water lies. The ‘we' in this case refers to the State Ground and Surface Water Resources Data...
More »Why 150 Million Rural Indians Could Lose Their Jobs -Diego Maiorano
-India Spend India's new government has apparently decided to restructure the United Progressive Alliance's flagship anti-poverty programme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). The scheme confers the right to every rural household to be employed in public works for 100 days per year. There are three reasons why the government wants to reform the NREGA. First, it is considered to be too expensive. Second, the programme is compromised...
More »New cropping method to boost pulses output -Sandip Das
-The Financial Express In a bid to promote optimum water usage and increase farmers' income, a new cropping method is being tested across northern India In a bid to promote optimum water usage and increase farmers' income, a new cropping method is being tested across northern India through sowing of moong bean in the same field prior to harvest of wheat crop. The short duration - 60 to 65 days - moong is...
More »When all the boards did shrink -Himanshu Upadhya
-Hard News Floods in Kashmir could have been managed better if there was a reliable early warning system The first fortnight of September saw Jammu and Kashmir being ravaged by severe flash floods. But, according to the snatches of news we got, the monsoon was below average in the state until the last week of August. Thereafter, four days of incessant rain in the Valley and in Jammu made almost all the...
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