The revised draft Seeds Bill 2019, which the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare placed in the public domain recently for suggestions and comments, seems to be a watered down version of a draft prepared about nine years ago by the then United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. Among other things, …
the Tamil Nadu government has brought the Bt Cotton seed issue back into focus by banning the sale of seeds from Mahyco over complaints of crop failure in Dharmapuri district. Bt Cotton varieties made by the Indian seed major had earlier been blacklisted by Andhra Pradesh after crop failures in …
seed companies testing genetically modified (gm) crops will now have to seek permission from village panchayats and state agriculture universities before carrying out field trials. Responding to allegations of biosafety violations (and raids on gm trial plots across the country), the Genetically Engineering Approval Committee (geac) has passed an order …
Small and marginal farmers are the worst hit by the problems that afflict agriculture. The macro and micro level factors together have created stress among the poor farmers forcing them to commit suicide.
THE first thing to note about the Mulkanoor cooperative is that it is an exception, not the rule. Given the otherwise dismal state of the cooperative movement in India, how many cooperative societies can boast of a turnover in excess of Rs 55 crore? Or have one of its members …
• Notified varieties are developed and tested through multi-location trials by the All India Coordinated Crop Improvement Programme. If the varieties are found to be superior, the Central Seed Committee (CSC) releases them through notification in the official gazette • Nucleus seeds are the pure genetic material of a notified …
I was the wrong person for the right story at the wrong time. But I didn't realise this when I got off at Rajahmundry station (location: East Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh). I called up Venkat Rao, who owns a plant nursery in nearby Kadiyam mandal. Over a laboured conversation featuring …
A doomsday vault is being built in the Arctic. Scientists expect the project will safeguard crop diversity in the event of a global catastrophe. Located on the remote Svalbard Island, roughly 1,000 km from the North Pole, the vault will hold about 1.5 billion seeds and 3 million crop varieties …
the genetically modified (gm) cotton story seems to be losing its thread. Most cotton-growing states in the country recently issued an order to force seed manufacturer Monsanto's licensees to sell its products at less than half the prevailing price. This move has led to litigation
State governments have fixed Bt cotton prices at Rs 750 per 450-gramme packet. Is there a basis for this figure? Apparently, yes. Alapati Satya Narayana, president, research, Nuziveedu Seeds, says: "For a domestic company it costs between Rs 400 and Rs 500 to develop a packet containing 450 grams of …
short of gunnybags: The shortage of gunny bags at government wheat procurement centres in several districts of Pakistan has forced farmers to sell their produce to private buyers below the support price. The rates of wheat dropped from Rs 425 to Rs 380 in the open market after the government …
Just before the Conference of Parties (COP) began, news had spread that the big seed companies were trying to slip in text in a resolution to dodge the moratorium on terminator seeds. These seeds are genetically altered to make them sterile and thus prevent reuse. Developing countries and civil society …
function graph() { var popurl="image/20060331/33_graph.jpg" winpops=window.open(popurl,"","width=500,height=300,scrollbars=yes") } Tangled web Vidarbha cotton farmers hit by state failure The number of suicides by cotton farmers in Vidarbha has risen alarmingly this cotton season (see graph: Suicide spike).This is not just a consequence of increasing input costs, water scarcity and the high interest …
On September 15, 2005 representatives of Syngenta disclosed to Down To Earth the company's plans to patent a few thousand gene sequences of the rice (Oryza sativa) genome. Further investigations revealed that the world's third largest seed company has filed at least 15 applications to secure patents over the rice …
The Seeds Bill 2004, which aims to replace the Seeds Act, 1966, is with the Indian Parliament. It is a bone of contention. Between interests of farmers and the private seeds industry. Parliament’s standing committee on agriculture is looking into this bill, drawing widespread criticism for favouring the seed industry …
Seed major Monsanto has been held guilty for supplying Bihar's farmers with bad quality hybrid maize seeds two years ago and causing them huge losses. A House panel of the state government recently urged the company to pay compensation to the farmers. In doing so, it rejected earlier findings by …
Is transgenic technology the only option to solve problems faced by agriculture today? Yields from major cereals have virtually saturated. And the global population is expected to increase by 50 per cent by 2050. Now, how do you feed 9 billion mouths? Organic agriculture can at best feed 4 billion …
Independent laboratory tests carried out in Hong Kong revealed genetically engineered (ge) seeds in packages of papaya seeds being sold by the department of agriculture's research station in the province of Khon Kaen. One of the fields at the research station has been ascertained as the source of the ge …
"Talk more, pay less,' suggests a billboard. A cellphone company is associating lower talktime rates with the amount of mangoes you buy. If you are a reporter trying to find why hundreds of indebted farmers have killed themselves in Andhra Pradesh (ap), the irony, in several square metres of neon-illuminated …
