A small farmer in Maharashtra, whose high-yielding rice variety is popular in five States, is denied the benefits of his research. TWENTY-SEVEN years ago, Dadaji Khobragade of Nanded Fakir village in Chandrapur district of Maharashtra noticed yellow seeds in three spikes of a paddy stalk in his field. Intrigued by the freak harvest, he preserved the grains. He subsequently planted them in a six-foot square plot, which he covered with thorny...

The Union government has set up a Group of Ministers (GoM) to examine the problem of paid news and suggest policy measures to combat it, according to informed sources. It will be headed by Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. The other members are: Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni, Home Minister P. Chidambaram, Law Minister Veerappa Moily, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar and Human Resource Development Minister Kabil Sibal. It is likely to...

When French Jesuit priest and passionate agriculturist Henri de Laulanie developed the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) method of cultivation for Madagascar’s poor farmers in the 1980s, he probably had no idea that millions of farmers elsewhere in the world would one day benefit from it as well. Here in India, one of the 40 countries where SRI is now in use, poor tillers of the land are even helping propagate...

Even as the media celebrate the Mercedes Benz deal in the Marathwada region as a sign of “rural resurgence,” the latest data show that 17,368 farmers killed themselves in the year of the “resurgence.” When businessmen from Aurangabad in the backward Marathwada region bought 150 Mercedes Benz luxury cars worth Rs. 65 crore at one go in October, it grabbed media attention. The top public sector bank, State Bank of India,...

Worried over crop losses and mounting loans, two farmers committed suicide and four others died of shock in the state in the last 24 hours. Apparao, 55, consumed pesticide at his residence in Kapuumilada village in Santabommali mandal of Srikakulam on Tuesday. He was depressed after his three-acre crop was damaged in the rains. He took the land on lease and cultivated paddy. V Krishna Murthy, 52, a marginal farmer of Vanjagi...