KEY TRENDS   • Oxfam India's 2023 India Supplement report on poverty and inequality in India reveals that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Following the pandemic in 2019, the bottom 50 per cent of the population have continued to see their wealth chipped away. By 2020, their income share was estimated to have fallen to only 13 per cent of the national income and have less than 3...

-Hindustan Times In north India’s food-bowl states, farmers set aflame paddy stalks around October to clear their fields for their next crop. This releases millions of tonnes of smoke, carbon dioxide stored in plant biomass, toxins and planet-warming gases in the atmosphere. Some environmentalists reckon this to be the deadliest spell of pollution in all of South Asia. In north India’s food-bowl states, farmers set aflame paddy stalks around October to clear...

-The Hindu Business Line Production of Gobindobhog rice is estimated to be 5-7 per cent higher this year on the back of a better-quality crop giving a better paddy to rice conversion rate West Bengal’s premium variety of aromatic rice — Gobindobhog – has witnessed a near 11 per cent decline in prices on the back of prospects of arrival of a higher crop and better quality produce. The imposition of 20...

-The Hindu In Punjab, a project to use of paddy straw to produce compressed bio gas is one that is replicable across India, and can transform the rural economy The beginnings of a renewable energy revolution rooted in agriculture are taking shape in India with the first bio-energy plant of a private company in Sangrur district of Punjab having commenced commercial operations on October 18. It will produce Compressed Bio Gas (CBG)...

-Mongabay India/ Scroll.in Data from the state’s agriculture department shows that the production of wheat in the region has remained stagnant in the last four years. Rahul Singh Tomar is a farmer at Raisalpur village in the Narmadapuram district of Madhya Pradesh. The village is part of the Narmada valley and is famous for the fertile black soil that yields high-quality wheat. “The soil in our village is different,” Tomar told Mongabay-India. “Crops...