Apart from growing chemical-free food, he also created a seed bank named Aadhiyagai (which means first blooming in Tamil), with more than 300 native vegetable and fruit seeds. In the village of Kuttiyagoundanpudur, close to the arid region of Oddanchatram in Tamil Nadu’s Dindigul district, lies Aadhiyagai Parameswaran’s six-acre farm. The area lacks a perennial […]
Source: The Better India
The change was not limited to what he had to unlearn, but in a shift in his mindset. Since he genuinely enjoyed farming, the transition was not that difficult. Ravdeep Singh was raised on a farm in the village of Farwahi, a stone’s throw from Barnala in Punjab. Although his parents worked in different professions, […]
Source: The Better India
Can tomatoes be grown at -17ºC? Thanks to researchers at #DRDO, Ladakhi farmers are not just growing them without using any chemicals, they are producing a harvest that’s twice the national average! It’s safe to say that climate conditions in Ladakh, a cold desert, are not exactly suited for growing warm-weather crops like tomato, capsicum, […]
Source: The Better India
Acharya Devvrat, who has been appointed as the Governor of Gujarat, will get ample opportunities to implement his dream project of ‘organic farming’, which he successfully launched in the state and motivated over 50,000 farmers to adopt this technique.
Source: The Tribune
T-shirts made from organic cotton cultivated by tribals of North Andhra are now becoming extremely popular among music lovers in Belgium. As many as 30,000 T-shirts made with the cotton in the garment factories based at Tirupur and Coimbatore are now used by the 8,000 participants in one of the biggest electronic dance music festivals […]
Source: The Hindu
‘If you protect the nation, the nation will protect you’, is the philosophy that P K Hormis Tharakan has lived his life by. Tharakan, a former Chief of Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) has played many roles in his life. An Indian Police Service officer, Director of the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau, Chief Advisor of […]
Source: The Better India
In April 2016, at the peak of his career in the Silicon Valley, San Francisco-based Vivek Shah decided to quit his job and return to India with his wife Brinda who holds a Masters in Printmaking. Why? To build a natural farm.
Source: The Better India
Hyderabad: Telangana’s Enabavi village can show the way to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. You have to look keenly to figure out that the stone board leading into Enabavi village once proudly declared ‘chemical-free village’. That was 13 years ago, when all 52 families in the village shifted to natural farming, without using pesticides or chemicals. […]
Source: NDTV
In November 2012, Punjab-based attorney, Kamaljeet Singh Hayer, lost his grandfather. The grand old man passed away at the age of 101. During his memorial service, a local MLA walked up to Singh, saying, “Your grandfather lived such a long and fulfilling life.” This pushed Kamaljeet to introspect on the massive health shift between his […]
Source: The Better India
The lip-service paid to organic farming must be backed by budgetary intent. Chemical farming is undeniably harmful It is a tragic fact that in India thousands of farmers take their lives every year. From 1995 to date, the figure is over 3 lakh farmers. Costly seeds, soil-destroying/life-threatening chemical fertilisers and pesticides, and a monstrous Central […]
Source: The Hindu
Kerala would promote collective farming which is done by various co-operatives and community networks like Kudumbashree. Pointing towards Contract Farming, Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar, in conference of State Agriculture Ministers in Delhi, has said that farming can become profitable if small and marginal farmers are given access to technological solutions and research. However, […]
Source: News Click
Back in 2016, Karthikeya Sivasenapathy, an organic farmer residing in Kuttapalayam village in Kangayam Block, Tiruppur district, was very concerned about the severe water deficit in the region. Following yet another drought, there was no water either for farming or livestock. Farmers from his village and surrounding areas were buying water at exorbitant rates, but […]
Source: The Better India
Once upon a time, in the semi-arid plains of Kutch, grew plants that bore soft white tufts of indigenous, Wagad cotton. The cotton’s softness was in contrast to its hardy nature—it required little water, no pesticide, and overall, very little care—perfect for the present-day situation of drought and water scarcity. However, with the introduction of […]
Source: Mongabay
With the government trying to set up clusters of organic farms, Goa’s only bio-fertiliser unit Cosme Biotech Pvt. Ltd., is hoping for turnaround in its fortunes. The plant located in the verdant forests of Sarvona, Bicholim, is a modern production facility designed as per international standards. However it operates in isolation with few Goans aware […]
Source: The Navhind Times
Sooraj CS remembers how his mother would pick tomatoes and chillies from their kitchen garden, wash off the soil and use them to make delicious curry. As a child, he took up small tasks to help her in the garden, and observing how she dug the ground, sowed seeds, tended to the plants and plucked […]
Source: The Better India
With special stress of ‘zero budget farming’, the Modi Government on Friday allocated Rs 1,30,485 crore to agriculture sector in its budget 2019- 20—almost 51,000 crore up from the revised allocation of the year 2018-19. In her budget, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman proposed a historic allocation of Rs 1,30,485 crore in the budget 2019- […]
Source: The Statesman
Being forced to eat and appreciate vegetables, especially the dreaded Karela (bitter gourd), is an extremely painful memory from my childhood. My grandmother would come up with myriad ways of concocting vegetable-based savouries, but they still remained an unwelcome taste to the palate. The situation is pretty much the same even now. The story remained […]
Source: The Better India
The agriculture sector is one of the mainstays of the Indian economy. Therefore, there are great expectations of the sector from the new finance minister for the upcoming Budget. There are several issues to be addressed right from doubling farmer’s income, to structural reforms to make it a profitable business. New age farming practices has […]
Source: Fortune India
Known for his literary works that mostly speak about people led movements in Punjab, legendary author and Sahitya Akademy Award winner Jaswant Singh Kanwal turned 101 on June 27. His birthday celebrations were marked with a five-day literary fest – ‘Puranmashi-Punjabi Jor Mela’ at his native village Dhudike in Moga from June 26-30. During the […]
Source: The Indian Express
Visakhapatnam: After selling 1,600 pineapples in a couple of days in Kakinada, S Krishna Rao, a pineapple grower near Seethampeta, Srikakulam district, is delighted to see an equally encouraging response from customers in Visakhapatnam for the aromatic fruit. He is one among a team of organic farmers associated with the farmer-producer groups, Integrated Tribal Development […]
Source: The Hans India
Delhi, (Prensa Latina) Two months before the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (COP 14) Summit, Sept. 2-13, India announced it will restore 21 million hectares of degraded land. India”s initiative is part of the Convention”s goal of achieving neutrality of land degradation worldwide by 2030, and this can only be achieved through sustainable management, combating […]
Source: Prensa Latina
NEW DELHI: A‘silent revolution’ is growing in the outskirts of Delhi as its villages have started taking baby steps towards achieving the organic state tag, said Manisha Saxena, secretary cum commissioner (Development) of Delhi government. By ‘silent revolution’, she refers to the farmers in the national capital adopting organic fertilisers and pesticide-free cultivation. “In the […]
Source: The New Indian Express
The lack of alternative livelihood options is reinforcing the attachment of the Konyaks, a Nagaland tribe, to the practice of shifting cultivation (jhum), highlights a new study. This perceived economic security is also strengthened by their strong connections to the forests in the outer fringes of the Eastern Himalayas in northeast India. However, increasing population […]
Source: Mongabay
A strong breeze rushes around, stirring up fallen leaves and banging doors shut on an exceptionally hot day in Lingamanaickenpatti village in Karur district. It is the region’s kaathadi kaalam (windy season) in this part of Tamil Nadu that is known for its bumper harvests of murungakkai (Moringa oleifera) from February to September. “The wind […]
Source: The Hindu
As the country braces itself for yet another bad monsoon, Syed Ghani Khan, a farmer in Karnataka’s Mandya district, is hoping to fight it with traditional farming techniques like multi-cropping and minor millet cultivation. These are the two techniques that helped the farmer from the remote village of Kirugavalu navigate the water crisis during the […]
Source: The Indian Express
