-DNA Broken promises apart, a regular income for farmers is extremely essential There is trouble on the farm front. With untimely rains accompanied by hailstorms and strong winds showing no signs of relenting, further deepening the prevailing agrarian crisis; and with the spate of farmer suicides on the rise, agriculture faces its worst-ever crisis. While the rising number of farmer suicides is only a reflection of how fragile the agrarian economy...

-The Hindu Business Line Mehsana (Gujarat): A monocropping culture, driven by healthy returns, threatens to hurt cotton farmers in Mehsana and other districts in the country's largest cotton-producing State, say agriculture experts working in the region. As the price of cotton slips due to excess supply and China scaling back on purchases, farmers in north Gujarat risk mounting their losses and the likelihood of reduced sowing in May. They had increased cotton...

-The Hindu Business Line   BARC finds 91.77 ppm of the material in DAP; fertiliser industry says it can't be blamed When the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) found high levels of uranium in fertiliser and soil samples from the Malwa region of Punjab last week, activists in the area were not surprised. They have long been warning about environmental contamination due to excessive phosphate fertiliser use. Local reports indicated that BARC found uranium...

-The Hindu RAJAHMUNDRY (Andhra Pradesh): As the government is busy in holding meetings on how to conduct Godavari Pushkarams, findings by two separate NGOs from Chennai and Hyderabad have exposed dangers of unhygienic conditions, unclean surroundings and toxicants spread through excess usage of plastic along the Godavari bunds and its adjourning towns and villages. Centre for Environment Studies in Southern India (CESSI), Chennai and Organization against River Water Pollution (ORWP), Hyderabad have...

-The Indian Express Rajkot/ Nagpur: For Kanaksinh Jadeja, Arvind Bhoyar and Rubhash Jakhar, cotton symbolised hope and a reason to believe there was still a future in agriculture. All three farmers - from Panchiyavadar in Gondal taluka of Rajkot (Gujarat), Ashi in Warora tehsil of Chandrapur (Maharashtra) and Patrewala in Fazilka (Punjab) respectively - made decent money over the last 10 years by growing cotton. They were helped by two factors. The first...