-Press release by CUTS International dated 5th July, 2021 In a study done by CUTS International under its 4-years  old project -- ProOrganic, almost 97.4 percent of consumers were found to be aware of the fact that chemical input-based food products are harmful for health compared to 86 percent of the same set of consumers way back in 2017. Similarly, the percentage of farmers doing organic farming has gone up to...

-Hindustan Times A garden can provide a context to students for understanding seasonality and life cycles of food; it can provide an opportunity to work cooperatively on real tasks; students can learn about where food comes from; and they can observe all of the principles of ecology in practice The Union human resource development (MHRD) ministry recently asked all schools (rural and urban) in the country to set up kitchen gardens. The...

-The Hindu Efforts to make agriculture climate-resilient must be scaled up and consolidated The pervasiveness of climatic aberrations and the associated socio-economic vulnerability are now widely recognised and experienced across the globe. The Sixth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on “Global Warming at 1.5°C” distinctly propagates the need to strengthen and enhance existing coping capacity and to remain committed to the objectives of the Paris Agreement. The report...

-The Indian Express Agriculture education is in a poor state. ICAR must be revamped Although autarky on Indian farms is a distant dream, as the 71st year of Independence dawns, penury-ridden farmers are still committing suicide by the thousands— a consequence of decades of short-sightedness, while economists and scientists are still equating food sufficiency to farmer sustainability. The occasion merits introspection on the core issues of farmers’ distress. We must begin at the...

-The Hindu Business Line The Government has several short and long-term strategies to achieve self-sufficiency Who can deny that pulses are at the core of the average Indian diet? Therefore, the NDA government’s multi-pronged short-term and long-term strategies to meet the growing consumption of pulses in the country — from importing to increasing production through new technologies, and making cultivation attractive to farmers — is to be welcomed. In fact, pulses play...