Decision On GM Mustard Deferred *Mining interests and tribal rights on collision course *Former atomic energy regulator says India needs to pause nuclear plans *Lesser water recorded in Indian reservoirs than last year *Sikkim Organic Mission: We Need To Dig Deeper *Hydro dam boom threatens freshwater fish *Radioactive Water From Fukushima Leaking Into the Pacific…
Read More about NEWS UPDATE #82
At the duck pond on the campsite – even better than YouTube!
Venetia Ansell
The camp is a great opportunity to meet people who are trying to make the transition from urban to rural or at least high impact to low impact lifestyles, to find inspiration, role models, ideas and perhaps answers to those questions and challenges that well meaning conventional thinking relatives and friends keep hurling at you….
Read More about Ideas, inspiration and ducks: Letter from an Ecologise Camp participant
25 March 2015. Farmer Nityagopal Barman (43) committed suicide, after being unable to repay his loans
AFP
Rajabhau Deshmukh, a farmer from Beed says: We’ve been reaping merely 20-30% of our average crop in the last few years. Even as bank loans, moneylenders’ debts, relatives’ credits and the interest keep gnawing at us, we’ve to somehow run our homes. To be honest, it seems we are not even allowed to fall sick….
Read More about A Marathwada farmer’s wake-up call to India: try to understand why we dieBowing To No One, the first film in a series by Sarah Khan, is about Satyavati, an indigenous woman farmer from Central India, who comes from a rich but rapidly eroding agro-ecological knowledge system. Also in this post is a report from Meghalaya’s Terra Madre festival, which brought together around 600 members of international indigenous food-making communities….
Read More about Video & Report: India’s indigenous people are holding fast to food traditions against all odds
Aadi Kumbruka with various types of legumes, millets, oilseeds and corns grown on his farm.
India Water Portal
Nauri grows 72 varieties of crop on his two-acre farm. “The benefit of mixed cropping is that even in extreme weather events, we get something out of the field. Some crops work well in drought, others in flood. Compare this with mono cropping which won’t even yield enough to eat in severe drought”, he explains….
Read More about Tribals in Odisha humour changing skies with mixed plattersColin Todhunter writes: A new paper by Rosemary A. Mason in the Journal of Biological Physics and Chemistry, titled ‘The sixth mass extinction and chemicals in the environment’ indicates that a ‘sixth extinction’ is presently under way (The Sixth Extinction, describes the ongoing extinction of species during the present Holocene epoch – since around 10,000 BCE). Download paper: The sixth mass extinction and chemicals in the…
Read More about The sixth mass extinction and chemicals in the environment
Frans Lanting
From the blurb: Around the world, people are increasingly facing a future that is crowded and hot, subject to violent weather extremes and a changing climate, where the rich and poor inhabit separate spheres and governments are unable or unwilling to confront these most vital challenges. For India, this reality is the very tangible present….
Read More about New book: Elemental India : The Natural World in Crisis
George Varghese
The rains have let us down terribly this year. There were farmers in our area who did not bother planting their rice crop when they realized that it wasn’t going to rain much this year and then there were others that took a chance and planted but didn’t bother harvesting since the crop was a disaster….
Read More about Weathering The Change - A Farmer’s Diary of 2015
Morvarid Fernandez
Morvarid Fernandez writes: Our crops failed, cattle graze the dry paddy straw, and fields remain fallow because there is not enough water. Bore wells are deeper, the lines longer, and the black blister bug – usually a bane – simply did not appear last year. The monsoon of 2015, you ask. But there just wasn’t one….
Read More about Winds of change – A view from NersaHaving endured three successive droughts, the region of Bundelkhand in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh continues to be on edge. Governments in both the states have failed to do their bit. Here’s a press conference video and interview of Yogendra Yadav, who leads the Swaraj Abhiyan movement, which recently held an extended survey of the region….
Read More about Video & Report: Yogendra Yadav on the unfolding famine in Bundelkhand and the need for a farmers’ politics
The Times of India reports: Distress conditions forced about 6 lakh people from Rayalaseema, where the major crop is groundnut, to move to cities in 2015. It works out to migration of around 1,600 persons per day last year. Although the rate dipped in November and December due to the ongoing cultivation, the trend continues….
Read More about NEWS UPDATE #79IndiaSpend reports: Indian farms depend too much on increasingly uncertain rainfall: while there was not enough rain during the pre-monsoon kharif season (July-October) last year, there has been vastly excess rainfall during this rabi season (October-March). For instance, Eastern Rajasthan, the farm belt of the desert state, had more than 14 times the normal rainfall during this pre-monsoon season….
Read More about A Farmer’s Life Crisis — And India’s Farming Predicament
southasia.oneworld.net
With the formation of WTO, a new international economic world order came into being. This has greatly affected the fate of farmers in developing countries. Writer and policy analyst Devinder Sharma elaborates on the impact of the continuing agrarian crisis in India and calls for a concerted effort in arresting the escalation of the crisis….
Read More about Video: Why are farmers dying?Dr. M.S. Swaminathan writes: It’s unfortunate that industrialised nations are so inward looking in the area of agricultural trade, particularly since hardly 2 to 3% of their population depend on agriculture for their livelihood. Nairobi has paved the way for famines of the future. (Also read: Digest of articles on the recently concluded WTO talks)…
Read More about M.S. Swaminathan: The WTO has paved the way for famines of the futureCommentator Biraj Patnaik writes: Nirmala Sitharaman gave the world a good illustration of crocodile tears. She was at the centre of the negotiations and walked away with little more than assurances of pious intent, after conceding to the core US demand to drop the re-affirmation of the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) from the ministerial declaration….
Read More about Digest: What the WTO talks at Nairobi mean for Indian agriculture
Energyemp.com
Devinder Sharma writes: The cumulative impact of cattle rearing in Australia, transportation of cattle from the ranches down under to China, and the resulting greenhouse gas emissions alone is going to be enormous. And yet meat consumption has not been mentioned at Paris climate talks. The reason is simple. The western lifestyle has not to be disturbed….
Read More about Why no meat at the Paris climate talks?
Dead mango trees at the author's farm during the drought of 2011-2015
Uma Shankari
Chittoor-based farmer and activist Uma Shankari writes: After the year 2010, for the first time we’ve had good rains; in fact exceptionally good rains, a side effect of the Chennai disaster. My husband used to say, “If Chennai drowns, we’ll be saved”. This time it came true. We’ve not seen such heavy rains in twenty, thirty years….
Read More about Did Marx call the peasant an idiot? He was right, I am an idiot.
Generating three centimeters of top soil takes 1,000 years, and if current rates of degradation continue all of the world’s top soil could be gone within 60 years, a senior UN official said Chris Arsenault, Reuters ROME (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Generating three centimeters of top soil takes 1,000 years, and if current rates of degradation…
Read More about Only 60 years of farming left if soil degradation continuesDates: January 23-25, 2016 Venue: ‘No Man’s Land’ Farm, Danandi Village, Sirsi Taluk, Uttara Kannada Dist., Karnataka Host: George Varghese, grgvrghs@gmail.com; +91 9481278348 “When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, only then will we realize that one cannot eat money.” – Native American saying We now live in…
Read More about Announcing Ecologise Camp 3 at Sirsi, Karnataka
Reuters
(Note: The weather is changing, adding to the woes of the Indian farmer, who is already in a state of crisis. Even as the pundits split hairs over climate change, for the farmer, it seems the writing is on the wall. In Weathering the change, we present a short series presenting the farmer’s perspective on the impact of these changes.)…
Read More about Series: Weathering the change – Part 1
