-The Guardian   Tamil Nadu farmer produces bumper crop four times larger than average using system of rice intensification An Indian farmer has set a state and possibly a national record for growing rice using a neglected method of cultivation that has been dismissed by academic researchers and received little financial backing from agribusiness. According to Jaisingh Gnanadurai, joint director of agriculture in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, farmer S Sethumadhavan from...

-The Guardian Rice conservationist Debal Deb grapples with 'mindless Indian elite' to reintroduce genetically diverse, drought-tolerant varieties   Fifty years ago, every Indian village would probably have grown a dozen or more rice varieties that grew nowhere else. Passed down from generation to generation and family to family, there would have been a local variety for every soil and taste - rice that would grow well in droughts or deep floods, which had...

-Deccan Herald Farming Syed Ghani Khan's farm stands unique with a verdant tapestry of 700 paddy varieties and 120 types of mango. This distinct ecosystem is the result of a farmer's constant effort with constructive involvement of his family, writes Anitha Pailoor, against the backdrop of the United Nations declaring 2014 as the year of family farming This is Nazar Bath collected from the tribal people of Maharashtra. They sow this unique...

The poor man’s rich grain is getting richer – a new study published in the Journal of Nutrition shows that a variety of new pearl millet (more commonly known as bajra), which was conventionally bred to be 10% richer in iron helped iron-deficient children under the age of 3 years, to absorb enough of this crucial mineral to meet their physiological requirements. (See links below for full text and a...

-The Hindu By allowing futures trade in food and diversion of farm land for commercial purposes, the UPA government is fuelling the price rise International agencies are warning of high food prices on a global scale in 2013 if urgent action is not taken. But our government shows little concern. The President’s address to Parliament had only a cursory mention of inflation. “Inflation is easing gradually, but is still a problem,” he...