Even as recent media reports caution that most fruits and vegetables are largely unfit for human consumption due to their high chemical content, pesticides continue to be used recklessly in the fields of Punjab. The ‘Granary of India’ constitutes 2.5 per cent of the total agricultural land in India, but consumes more than 18 per cent of the total pesticides used in India. Within the state the worst affected is the southwestern...

Draft report claims investor interest is focussed on countries with weak land governance. A leaked World Bank report into investors from rich nations buying up African farmland has intensified campaigners' fears that the growing trend is marginalising local producers. After a spate of investments in African land by sovereign wealth funds looking for gains on rising commodity prices and by countries such as China worried about their own food security, the World...

Acting with determination and firm action, it should be possible for India to step up its agricultural growth rate to 10 per cent. The 11th Five Year Plan seeks to achieve 4 per cent growth rate in agriculture by the end of the Plan period. The Planning Commission is working towards an overall 9 per cent to 10 per cent growth rate. But the target of 4 per cent growth rate is...

How fresh and healthy are the vegetables that you consume daily? Not much, according to the Union health ministry. In a bid to make them look garden fresh and ensure that they grow faster to reach markets, farmers are using chemicals at random that threaten to cause serious health hazards to consumers. Expressing concern, minister of state for health Dinesh Trivedi has said, "Eating vegetables -- a must for good...

The Supreme Court's observation that the above the poverty line (APL) population should be kept out of the purview of the Public Distribution System (PDS) is in direct conflict with the National Advisory Council's (NAC) recent decision for universalisation of the system beginning with 150 yet-to-be-identified districts. At present APL beneficiaries are getting up to 12 kg of foodgrains per family. The quantum was revised to 15 kg just this...