India’s Caution and Climate Finance Challenges: Navigating COP28 Outcomes
The biggest concern for India and other developing countries is scaling up of climate finance for adopting transition pathways towards achieving net-zero emissions.
A Amarender Reddy
Principal Scientist, ICAR-Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture, Hyderabad.
Maximizing Benefits from the e-NAM Platform
A unified, efficient market platform integrated with major mandis of the country, coupled with the onboarding of service providers and stakeholders of the agricultural commodity value chain, has the potential to boost farmers’ income by ensuring better crop prices through a transparent price discovery and quality certification. Such a platform can equally benefit the service providers, traders and others.
Utilise Crop Residue Efficiently
Indian agriculture has focused primarily on maximising crop output levels over the last six decades or so, with limited or negligible attention to post-harvest management. As a result, development of efficient value chains for agricultural commodities remains muted, while that for by-products and crop residue is nearly non-existent. Furthermore, with increased pressure on the land to produce more crops in a year, it has become a practice to treat crop residue as waste and burn it for quick disposal.
Stalemate on GMO Crop Policies: A Barrier to Agricultural Advancement
A Amarender Reddy GEAC’s Recommendation and the Promise of DMH-11 The government’s Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) has recommended the environmental release of transgenic Dhara Mustard Hybrid-11 (DMH-11) for testing in farmers’ field crops and seed production. If testing in…
M.S. Swaminathan: A Legacy of Food Security and Sustainability
MS Swaminathan was a remarkable scientist who changed the course of the history of India through contributions to India’s food security in a very difficult time of frequent famines, hunger and poverty. He was born on August 7, 1925, in Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu, went for higher studies in England and completed his PhD from Cambridge University in the year 1952. After his studies, although he was offered a position at Wisconsin University (USA), he chose to return to his motherland where he had no job, to serve the country on the back of famines, poverty and hunger due to food shortages and crop failures.
Onion Prices: A Perennial Problem
In response to the exponential hike in onion prices in the mandis (wholesale fruit and vegetable bazaars) and retail markets, the Union Government reintroduced stock limits on October 23 on traders and wholesalers by invoking a provision of the newly-amended Essential Commodities Act of 1955. Before this, to ease rising prices, the Government had banned export of the bulb and relaxed import norms to increase the stocks available for retail trade.