-Down to Earth Cattle ranchers sold milch cows at throwaway prices after incurring losses of about Rs 3 lakh in 5 months   Mangatram Aane  from Lokra village in Haryana’s Gurugram district had hopes of good income when he left his job with Hero Honda 15 years ago and started dairy farming.  Initially, he fetched a good money from dairy farming, then he  became a veterinary doctor. He felt that dairy farming had...

-TheWire.in The crisis is well known and has been written about for decades now. Government intervention has taken place but little has changed. The Vidarbha region of Maharashtra consists of eleven districts: Akola, Amravati, Washim, Nagpur, Yavatmal, Wardha, Buldhana, Chandrapur, Bhandara, Gadchiroli and Gondia. As of 2012, 65% of the population living in this region was solely dependent on agriculture and allied activities for their livelihood and vocational needs. This is due to...

-Down to Earth There is a widespread availability of inferior quality as well as spurious biofertiliser and organic fertiliser products across the country The availability, quality and uptake of biofertilisers and organic fertilisers in India is poor, flagged a new report. These non-chemical options are considered critical to the transition from chemical-based to sustainable farming practices like organic and natural farming. The availability of cost-effective quality biofertilisers and organic fertilisers is, therefore, of...

-CivilSocietyOnline.com WHEN the Sri Lankan economy collapsed with a sigh recently, prominently sticking out of the debris was a failed attempt to take the island nation into full-scale organic agricultural production. The Rajapaksa government had virtually overnight ordered a switch to organic agriculture to save foreign exchange on the import of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. But going organic, instead of being the solution, became a bigger problem with food crops failing and the...

-Mongabay.com - Perennial waterlogging in agricultural fields of Charkhi Dadri is making them uncultivable. Farmers are adopting alternate occupations or taking land on lease in other villages to continue farming. - While groundwater scarcity is a problem in many parts of North India, some 319 villages in Haryana have the opposite issue of waterlogging because of high groundwater levels. - Government interventions, saline water draining attempts and subsidies for crop diversification, along with...