-Down to Earth In 2019, India imported around 15 million tons of edible oils worth approximately Rs 7,300 crore Edible oils are indispensable in the Indian kitchen. But it might be surprising to many that India imports most of the oil it consumes, unlike most other agricultural products which are produced locally. Even after having a diverse agro-climatic conditions, abundant land and large sections of population depending on agriculture, why does India have...

-Financial Express Only three crops -- groundnut, jowar and moong -- have recorded higher arrivals on year (see chart). Even in the case of jowar and moong, arrivals fell in the largest-producing states of Maharashtra (-39%) and Rajasthan (-7%), respectively. Amid the row over the three new federal farm laws aimed at giving unfettered market access to farmers, the producers of various crops seem to have started to rely much less on...

-Down to Earth The food most associated with biodiversity loss also tends to also be connected to unhealthy diets across the globe As the global population has doubled to 7.8 billion in about 50 years, industrial agriculture has increased the output from fields and farms to feed humanity. One of the negative outcomes of this transformation has been the extreme simplification of ecological systems, with complex multi-functional landscapes converted to vast swaths...

-The Indian Express Between September and December, when retail onion prices soared from around Rs 30 to Rs 100-plus per kg (they have since fallen to Rs 50 or so), Paswan has similarly urged state governments through Twitter to “act” against alleged hoarders of the bulb. On January 7, Union Consumer Affairs minister Ram Vilas Paswan took to Twitter, to issue a stern warning to “hoarders”, whom he blamed for “creating artificial...

-The Hindu Business Line The maximum crop damage was reported from Western Madhya Pradesh, which received 61 per cent surplus rains. Excess monsoon rains and the floods caused by them affected crops in many States, including Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and Punjab, according to a kharif crop damage report released by private weather forecaster Skymet on Tuesday.   While 40 to 50 per cent of soyabean crop has been hit in Madhya...