Accountability for malnutrition
The 2nd Convention on Children’s Right to Food held in Bhopal recently explored why malnutrition persists and grows in India, despite attention from the media, voluntary organisations, political parties and MNCs. Is it because malnutrition has still not become a big enough issue with the people, asks Sachin Kumar Jain
The tragedy of the potato farmer
Why have potato and chilly farmers been dumping their stocks on the streets in protest? Biju Negi reports on the market engineering that is looting the poor farmer
Monsanto defeated by Roundup-resistant weeds
While Monsanto grandly claims that its GM technologies help the environment by reducing pesticide use, weeds resistant to glyphosate, the main ingredient of Monsanto’s bestselling Roundup herbicide, are rapidly spreading across continents, further burdening farmers
Sustainable agriculture reduces distress migration in Orissa
Thanks to intervention from MASS, migration from Orissa’s Bargarh district has reduced considerably as villagers have been encouraged to start their own kitchen gardens, keep goats and chickens, and set up seed and grain banks, thereby adding to their income from agriculture and reducing their dependence on unscrupulous moneylenders
Grassroots scientists challenge seed monopolies
Beej Bachao Andolan is removing the veil of secrecy from the seed research and development process by training farmers in Uttarakhand on cross-breeding rice varieties, helping them reclaim this traditional knowledge and technology from the agri-chemical industries that monopolise the sector
Requiem for sustainable, subsistence agriculture
In Ladakh, the dzo has been replaced by the tractor, organic manure by chemical fertilisers, and indigenous crops by vegetables for the tourist market. A whole culture of agriculture is dead
A PDS that works is better than cash transfers
A survey of the Public Distribution System across 1,227 BPL households from 106 villages in nine states reveals an impressive revival of the system, with an overwhelming majority of the poor preferring food to cash transfers
'Push-pull' agriculture stems migration into cities
More than 25,000 small farmers in East Africa have multiplied yields with push-pull cultivation, in which Desmodium planted alongside maize pushes out pests while Napier grass planted along the borders pulls them in. The method could be used in India to good effect
African landrush
India's farmland is now international. In Africa, South America and South East Asia, companies that are Indian or Indian-owned have bought or leased hundreds of thousands of hectares to grow foodgrain, pulses and edible oil. Their acquisitions and activities are seen as backed by the central government in a tacit furthering of India's food security mission
Neem, garlic and green chillies: Recipe for a bumper crop
Veera Narayana was once a desperate farmer in drought-hit Andhra Pradesh, spending Rs 10,000 in chemical inputs per acre of watermelon crop. Today, he is the guru of organic farming in Singanamala block, his watermelon harvests healthy and his input costs a fraction of what they were