-Firstpost.com Chandigarh: With extensive rice farming in Punjab taking an increasing toll on groundwater reserves and soil health, government agencies are now asking farmers to diversify into profitable allied trades including dairy and pig farming and fisheries. Farmers are also being asked to cultivate crops other than paddy. Farmers in different parts of the state have started growing other, more profitable crops alongside rice. In a break with the fertiliser and pesticide-driven...

-Down to Earth Much of the groundwater in Malwa, Punjab has chemicals exceeding permissible limits, putting children at risk of a blood disorder Groundwater in Malwa region of Punjab is unfit for drinking and irrigation, according to a study published recently in the Arabian Journal of Geosciences, the official journal of the Saudi Society for Geosciences. The study also warns that children in the region are highly vulnerable to methemoglobinemia, a blood...

-The Times of India PATIALA: In a move aimed at preventing ‘desertification’ of Punjab by saving more than 24 lakh million litres of water in just five days, the state government has issued a notification to delay the paddy sowing by another five days. The five-day delay would be saving enough water to meet all requirements of the state (including domestic and industrial) for over one and a half years. The notification has...

-PTI Researchers from Harvard and NASA have shown that in October and November about half of all pollution in Delhi can be attributed to agricultural fires on some days Boston: Agricultural fires are to blame for about half of the pollution experienced in Delhi in October and November, a peak stubble burning season in Punjab, a Harvard study has found using satellite data from NASA. Many farmers in northwest India typically burn abundant...

-The Indian Express Sukhdev Singh Kokari Kalan, general secretary of BKU (Ugrahan), said that Captain Amarinder Singh had not fulfilled his promise and the policies he is bringing in the budget is ‘suicidal’ for the farmers. Jalandhar: The farming community, which is under acute depression due to long goining agrarian crisis, were left disappointed as the Congress government in Punjab announced its second budget Saturday. Experts and farmers of Punjab have...