-Financial Express Pritam Singh, who farms on 110 acres, including some land taken on lease, at Urlana Khurd village of Haryana’s Panipat district, has just sold his harvest of Basmati rice varieties — PB 1121 and PB 1509 — at the local mandi at Rs 3,800 and Rs 3,500 a quintal, respectively. Both the varieties, developed by the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), Pusa, Delhi, fetch farmers like Singh financial benefits in...
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Maharashtra firm sold rice feared to be GM-contaminated: Centre -Priscilla Jebaraj
-The Hindu Union Commerce Ministry clarifies after European Commission’s charge. The Centre has identified a Maharashtra-based exporter as the source of the broken rice flagged in Europe as contaminated with genetic modifications (GM) earlier this year, the Commerce Ministry said on Wednesday. It added that the 500-tonne consignment was given a non-GMO certification by an independent agency before it was shipped to France. While reiterating that GM rice is not grown commercially in India,...
More »Govt must promote crop diversification by setting MSP for other crops as well -Manjit S Kang
-The Indian Express Farmers’ genuine concerns must be addressed as soon as possible so that they can continue producing food and fibre needed for the ever-increasing population. In the early 1960s, near-famine conditions prevailed in India and some 10 million tonnes of wheat had to be imported from the US under the PL480 programme. The country’s situation was pejoratively dubbed “ship-to-mouth” existence, as foodgrains arriving via ships were immediately consumed. In 1963, Norman...
More »Seeds of Hope -Harish Damodaran
-The Indian Express India’s premier farm research and education institute has a full-time director after nearly four years. It is an institution whose blockbuster varieties account for more than 95% of the country’s Rs 32,800-crore annual basmati rice export revenues, nearly half of its total wheat area, and a quarter of that sown under mustard. Yet, the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI, better known as Pusa Institute) has an annual research budget...
More »Take a call on banning 18 pesticides, SC directs Centre -Jayashree Nandi
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has recently directed the Centre to take a decision on banning 18 pesticides within the next two months. Most of these have been banned in other parts of the world because of their health and ecological impacts. SC has also said that if a decision is taken to ban a particular pesticide, then the ban be implemented within 15 days. Farmers groups, public...
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