The recent high-pressure tactics to introduce genetically engineered food crops in India are another rude reminder that Western agribusiness companies have a deeprooted strategy to obtain a stranglehold on India’s food and agriculture system. In a review of recent trends titled ‘Food Without Choice’ (The Tribune, November 1) Prof Pushpa M. Bhargava (who was nominated by the Supreme Court in the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee to protect safety concerns), an internationally...

HAS GREEN REVOLUTION FAILED INDIA'S POOR? Green Revolution Vs Rain-fed Farming OVERVIEW: Of late India’s fabled Green Revolution has come under severe attack. Many development thinkers believe that it has unfairly skewed India’s agriculture policy in favour of the farmers whose land is already or potentially covered under irrigation. The basic criticism is that the Green Revolution has been largely irrelevant for India’s 60 per cent cultivable land which is un-irrigated. These...

The rural population is at present estimated at 85 crores. Ten per cent of the households are completely landless. Another 52 per cent have holdings of less than 0.2 hectare. The per capita agricultural land in the rural areas has come down to 0.12 hectare. According to the National Sample Survey, the annual income of an agricultural household from farming is less than Rs 12,000 and from all sources it...

DINDIGUL: Tribals from different villages on the Kodaikanal hill on Monday organised a demonstration here on Monday to flay a move to displace them from their land by Forest Department officials. They appealed to the government to implement the Forest Rights Act and redraw tribal areas. They alleged that forest officials prevented tribal people from collecting forest produces such as honey and firewood for their survival and foisted cases against...

In a new initiative, the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), in collaboration with the Department of Science and Technology (DST), has turned to non-governmental organisations to reach their technologies to farmers. The extension wing of the IARI on Wednesday interacted with representatives of 25 select NGOs working with farmers to draw a strategy for location specific technology transfer. As a special incentive, the IARI agreed to give free need-based, area-specific seeds...