-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Union agriculture ministry is probing the circumstances under which a senior government scientist purportedly tried to malign vaccines used to protect livestock from foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks that can threaten India's milk yields. An expert panel from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research has told the agriculture ministry that Bhoj Raj Singh, a microbiologist at an ICAR research centre, has "caused damage" to the reputation of India's foot-and-mouth...
More »SEARCH RESULT
India’s wheat crisis
-The Financial Express At today’s prices, imports cost less than Indian grain Imagine the irony. India has 34 million tonnes of wheat stocks with the Food Corporation of India (FCI) already and another 3-4 million will get added to this by July 1, but the country is still importing wheat, albeit in very small quantities. By July 1, FCI’s wheat and rice stocks will cross 60 million tonnes as compared to the...
More »Drought, beef ban force distress sale of cattle in villages -Priyanka Kakodkar
-The Times of India YAVATMAL: The first thing that strikes you about Dahegaon village is its run-down and abandoned bullock-carts. They can be found lying outside most huts, with their paint peeling off, almost frozen in time. The animals which used to operate the carts are no longer there. Nearly half the village of 5,000 people sold has off its bullocks over the last few months, says sarpanch S M Balki. The...
More »MGNREGA failure adds to Vidarbha’s suicide woes -Kavitha Iyer
-The Indian Express Mumbai: Despite MGNREGA’s rich possibilities, Kumar notes that the Maharashtra government has slashed allocations under it to Rs 800 crore in 2014-15. Even as it stares at unprecedented crop loss from back-to-back droughts followed by untimely rains/hailstorms, Maharashtra has seemingly given the short shrift to MGNREGA, which could have gone some way in mitigating the current crisis. And significantly, its potential has been least leveraged in Vidarbha, the region...
More »Killing fields -AR Vasavi
-The Hindu Gajendra Singh Rajput from Dausa. Hargovind Harane from Vidarbha . Gosai Patra from Bardhaman. Why did these farmers take their own lives? In the light of the burning issue of farmer suicides across the country, A.R. Vasavi looks at the plight of the marginalised cultivator. Basamma and her ailing husband have carried and spread their five sacks of ragi (finger millet) from their half-acre plot to the local tar road...
More »