The Indian Express reports: Last week, a Solar Pump Irrigators’ Cooperative Enterprise (SPICE) was up and running in Dhundi, a village in Gujarat’s Anand district. Members of this cooperative —the first of its kind in the world— are using solar power not only to run pumps, but also sell their surplus energy to the grid….
Read More about SPICE: The world’s first solar farming cooperative
Morvarid Fernandez
Maninder Dabas writes: With 35% of agricultural households having less than 1 acre of land, the shrinking of agricultural land holdings in India is a worrying trend. Since 1995-96, the average size land holding has decreased from 1.41 hectares to 1.15 hectares which accounts for the decrease of 30,000 hectares of cultivable land each year….
Read More about With cultivable land shrinking steadily, food surplus India stares at food deficient future
As India reels under a back-to-back drought, with 10 states declared affected and nearly 2,00,000 villages affected, it’s time to ask whether the present situation could’ve been avoided. As many expert voices presented here point out, it’s not the weather alone that creates a drought, but bad planning and an often corrupt and apathetic administration….
Read More about Series: Combating drought – 1: What the experts say
Madhu Ramnath reports: Unknown to the rest of the country, a small group of adivasis from the forested villages in central Bastar have been busy doing work that would make conservationists proud. People from Sandh Karmari, Kakalgur, Kangoli and nearby villages have been gathering native seeds and raising them in nurseries in fairly large numbers….
Read More about Bastar: Conservation in the time of conflictEnvironmental activist and water expert Himanshu Thakkar tells Business Standard that India needs a comprehensive water use policy immediately. Making it clear that India is facing its worst drought ever, he says: “I do not think it is statement of pessimism but possibly reflects a reality. What we are seeing this year is unprecedented in many respects….
Read More about India facing its worst water crisis ever: Himanshu ThakkarSpeaking at a National Consultation on Drought, journalist P. Sainath explains how India’s ‘thirst economy’ makes profits. “If we think we are facing is only a drought, we’re in serious trouble. You’re in the midst of a mega water crisis,” he says, debunking the idea that a good monsoon will solve India’s crippling water crisis….
Read More about P. Sainath: “You are in the midst of a mega water crisis”
Sumit Chaturvedi reports: The 2011-’12 agricultural census and caste census, summarises the failure of India’s land reforms: No more than 4.9% of farmers control 32% of India’s farmland. A “large” farmer in India has 45 times more land than the “marginal” farmer. 101.4 million – or 56.4% – of rural households own no agricultural land….
Read More about Failure of reforms: 5% of India’s farmers own a third of the land
India ranks in the top 20 in the Climate Change Vulnerability Index. Our average surface temperature, over the past four decades, has risen by 0.3° Celsius, accompanied by a rising incidence of floods, droughts and cyclones. With the majority of all landholdings measuring less than a hectare, farmers face a steep decline in household income….
Read More about Varun Gandhi: Insure farmers against climate changeIn the past, water scarcity was a constraint that inspired communities to conserve water, devising locally appropriate technologies to share resources. Rajasthan’s baolis and Tamil Nadu’s eris are just two of the many traditional water harvesting systems that survive to this day. However, they have been sidelined by spectacular state projects such as large dams….
Read More about Amita Baviskar: The drought is no longer a natural disaster
Representational pic
With the drought scorching the world and the rest of India refusing to let up, Agumbe in Shimoga district of Karnataka, known as the ‘Cherrapunji of the the South’ for the abundant rainfall it receives, is experiencing water scarcity this year. In nearby Kerala, perennial rivers like the Pamba and Kabini have gone dry, affecting thousands….
Read More about Water-rich Agumbe has run dry: and it’s not the only place
Over 54 crore people across 13 States are in the grip of drought, and it is a multi-dimensional crisis. Highlighting this at a national consultation in Delhi, Yogendra Yadav said that owing to the drought, people were battling for drinking water and food, domestic cattle were dying a nomadic death and farms had turned fallow….
Read More about Yogendra Yadav: ‘54 crore farmers in the grip of drought’Marathwada region has seen a rise in farmer suicides due to a combination of shrinking agricultural income and an inability to repay loans. Reported suicides in the eight districts comprising Marathwada jumped by 570 per cent between 2012 and 2015. In this probing multi-part series, Tushar Dhara takes a closer look at the never-ending crisis of Marathwada’s farmers….
Read More about Special: The shocking predicament of the Marathwada farmer, up closeSunitha Natti reports: A New Indian Express analysis shows we are witnessing four back-to-back droughts for the first time in at least 100 years and are coursing through another as we speak. At least two of them were severe. Analysis of rainfall data across states for the past three decades threw up some startling findings….
Read More about Express Study: Fourth Successive ‘Drought’ in 100 Years
Many parts of India is in the grip of severe drought, some for the third consecutive year, leading to growing hunger, mass migration, water conflicts and farmer suicides. We present four well-known voices – Yogendra Yadav, Jean Dreze, Sunita Narain and the late Anil Agarwal – on India’s perennial drought problem, its causes and possible solutions….
Read More about Four critical voices on India’s perennial drought problem
The Indian Express reports: The Global Integrated Drought Monitoring and Prediction System (GIDMaPS) map shows large patches of dry areas in every continent, indicating droughts of varying severity. The GIDMaPS is a drought monitoring and prediction system that provides near real-time drought information based on multiple drought indicators and input data sets, mostly from NASA….
Read More about Drought Digest: Dry planet: In every continent, flashing red
Martin Simpson writes: It is impossible to read Farmageddon without coming to the conclusion that the world’s food and agriculture system is screwed. This is a system that produces enormous quantities of food, yet wastes up to a third of it… What it also produces is environmental disaster, ill health in humans and stressful and unhealthy animals….
Read More about Bookshelf: Farmageddon – The True Cost of Cheap Meat
Amit Verma/Forbes India
Debarshi Das writes: The neoliberal State seeks to cut down welfare expenditure, hence it is against PDS. It also relies on the market. Although contemporary advocates of free market are not motivated by extraction of colonial revenue, in terms of policy prescription they do not differ from the advocates of free market of colonial era….
Read More about Famines and Public Distribution System in India
Billy Brack writes: Shattering: Food, Politics and the Loss of Genetic Diversity by Fowler and Mooney is one of the important books of our times, explaining how agribusiness is putting the world at risk by limiting the world’s food crops to a few genetic strains. Quite literally we are putting our eggs in one basket….
Read More about Bookshelf: Shattering: Food, politics, and the loss of genetic diversity
Rocco Pallin writes: Thirty-three percent of soil worldwide is degraded, and 50,000 square kilometers of soil are lost each year. Soil is not a renewable resource and “isn’t recoverable within a human lifespan,” but sustainable practices could increase the world’s food production by 58 percent. Here are seven projects helping to restore the world’s soil….
Read More about Seven projects around the world that protect soilCowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret is a groundbreaking feature-length environmental documentary produced and directed by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn. It follows the intrepid filmmakers as they uncover the real impact of the livestock industry. The film investigates why the world’s leading environmental organizations, including Greenpeace and Rainforest Action Network, are afraid to talk about it….
Read More about Cowspiracy: ‘The film that environmental organisations don’t want you to see’
