What monsoon means

Orchards in desert

A simple technology assures continuous moisture supply to plants, helps grow orchards in water-scarce areas

It is not a drought but a cumulative outcome of decades of policy sins

It is not deficit monsoon, rather the lack of policies and mechanisms to drought-proof susceptible areas that turn the situation into a crisis

NREGA needs a paradigm shift

Towards a hopeful agricultural future

In India, no other industry has as many restrictions, controls and blatant discriminations as agriculture

Government tries to harvest success with farmer-friendly Budget

The 2016 Budget has the right intent for the rural sector, but lacks clarity

Bring farmers to farms

It's raining GDP

People feel cheated over government assurances on Pedhi dam

Budget pitches for agriculture

No incentives for organic fertilizers and sustainable farming  

Climate-smart agriculture: an answer to climate change

Sustainably increasing agricultural production, adapting to climate change and reducing emissions are the main points of climate-smart …

Ministers fight over funding National Rainfed Area Authority

African dryland trees store less carbon than believed earlier, finds study

Study by team including NASA scientists estimates carbon stocks of trees in semi-arid sub-Saharan Africa; calculates 840 million …

States told to roll out contingency plans

Plans cover crops, poultry, livestock and fisheries; Centre allows use of funds from agriculture schemes for funding contingency plans

Desi cotton to the rescue

CICR banks on traditional solutions to Vidarbha’s cotton crisis

A continental crisis, and a few green shoots

African countries are fighting an addiction: import of food items, which happens at the cost of domestic farmers. Despite the unprecedented …

Persistent in folly

Rice and wheat fetch a secure price and subsidies on farm inputs. Coarse grains have no place in the public distribution system, although their …

Rice: the real cost

It is said the future wars would be fought over the issue of water, not land. Yet Indian government promotes rice, which consumes water, over …

Cereal killer

By promotong rice over coarse grains, the government is promoting food scarcity and defeciency of micronutrients among India's most malnourished …

Salted lands of Australia

Bad cropping practices and ill-planned water management leads to salted Australian farmland

Grain of truth

India's public distribution system promotes rice and wheat. These water-intensive crops require more inputs and are less nutritious as compared …

From where our food will come

Time to be different

Agriculture Don't fix is the government's fix

India must focus on rainfed farming

There was a time when it was said that the Indian budget was a gamble on the monsoons. That is not the case any more, with industrial production …