Media Monitor
Dairy Farming
How an IAS Officer Helped Set Up India’s First Transgender-Run Milk Cooperativeedit
The Better India – Online
The last time The Better India spoke to Thoothukudi District Collector Sandeep Nanduri, he was busy monitoring the activities of Cafe Able run by differently-abled people. A few days after launching the cafe in August last year, he told us why one-time donations are not going to change things.
“There is a dire need to create sustainable livelihoods instead of giving neglected sections of society false promises or money. The cafe will provide stable incomes and a life of dignity to the differently-abled,” he said.
Dams and Indian Agriculture
Mangrove coverage is declining, but there is hope, flags studyedit
DownToEarth – Online
Mangroves forests are being threatened at an increasing pace: River dams negatively impact the supply of mud that raises mangrove soils. The space required for their survival is increasingly getting occupied by buildings and seawalls. Tidal barriers have proven to be disastrous for mangrove coverage and can result in species loss.
But mangrove coverage can increase despite sea-level rise if sediment supply is sufficient and land accommodation space available, according to a recent study published in Environmental Research Letters November 10, 2020.
Mangroves depend on a steady supply of sediment flowing down from rivers. The delivery of sediment from most rivers reduced over the past three decades.
Coastal mangrove forests are valuable, highly biodiverse ecosystems that protect coastal ...
Technology in Agriculture
CropData enabling small farmer’s big dream using AI, blockchain and cloudedit
Dataquest – Online
CropData provide an ecosystem with a cluster of services for the agriculture supply chain, aggregating aggregators, with primary focus on the first-mile interface.
CropData’s agriculture E-Marketplace allows farmers to connect directly with buyers with the primary focus on neutrality.
Every farmland in the country is different from the other. With the help of our data analysis, we have found that even adjoining farms can have significant variations in farm health parameters.
In addition to environmental challenges like drought, government schemes such as insurance, subsidies, and even minimum support prices being uniform for farmers across the nation pose great challenges for them. Our mission is to help the smallest farmer in the remotest part of India make a ...
How agri-tech will provide the answers to future-proofing sustainable crop productionedit
Eastern Daily Press – Online
One of the most critical global challenges the human race faces is how it is going to feed the world’s population, both now and in the future. Norwich Research Park is shining a light on food security today as part of Agri-Tech Week.
The combination of a rapidly-growing population and significant changes in climate means that never before has there been such a demand for and subsequent strain on the world’s food production. Not only are high levels of crop production needed, they also need to be produced in a sustainable way.
Crops are faced with many threats, including biological – insects, diseases and weeds – and non-biological – changes in temperature, ...
Connecting farms to folk: Linking agri-tech to FPOs can create valueedit
Financial Express – Online
Covid-19 has transformed the market. My grocer of three decades, in my small hometown, operates via a smartphone and says ‘you can order on WhatsApp’. He home delivers stuff and collects payments through any United Payments Interface (thank RBI) option. He accepts cash, like before, but prefers digital transactions.
A farmers’ group near Bangalore offers grapes, guavas and mangoes for home delivery ‘direct from the farm’. Fresh quality produce, paid for digitally and delivered at the doorstep. It is not the big guys, but the farmers and small traders who are changing the market. Welcome to the new ‘Phygital’: Digital finance & commerce, physical delivery: ‘WhatsApp’ for small groups, ERP for Amul or Big Basket! Each in their ...
‘India startups seek high-tech solutions to colossal food waste’edit
The Times of India – Online
Startups and venture capital are pouring into what might seem an unlikely place: India’s vast, outdated agriculture industry. Seizing on controversial new deregulation, entrepreneurs are selling farmers apps to connect them to big buyers nationwide and using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the rickety supply chains that lose one-fourth of India’s produce to wastage. Enormous amounts of India’s grain, fruit and vegetables rot between farm and table because of manual handling, repeated loading and unloading, poor inventory management, lack of adequate storage and slow movement of goods. This rate of wastage from faulty supply chains is four to five times that of most large economies, experts say. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government introduced changes it calls a watershed that ...
Stubble Burning
Incentivising farmers ‘can solve’ the problem of Delhi’s yearly air pollution woesedit
The Indian Express – Online
Every year around this time, the air quality index (AQI) levels in Delhi-NCR slip into the ‘severe’ category due to stubble burning in neighbouring states, and the government agencies get busy discussing the alternatives to end it, but in vain. This has become an episodic problem from October to mid-November for the last several years.
“The minute air pollution increased, Delhi had the highest number of Covid cases in one day – 7,000. International research has also shown that places with high pollution levels will have more Covid cases,” observes Jyoti Pande Lavakare, Co-Founder of Care for Air, who will soon release her book, Breathing Here is Injurious to your Health.
Stubble burning cases in Punjab breach 71k-markedit
The Times of India – Online
With 1,758 stubble burning incidents recorded in the last 24 hours till Thursday evening, the total count of farm fires in this paddy harvest season has reached 71,081. Stubble burning had started 53 days back in Punjab on September 21 and it continues unabated despite various measures taken by both state and central governments.
The border district of Fazilka recorded the maximum 266 burning incidents on Thursday, followed by 239 in Sangrur, 230 in Barnala, 200 in Muktsar, 170 in Bathinda, 165 in Ludhiana, 156 in Mansa, 84 in Faridkot, 80 in Ferozepur, 75 in Patiala, 65 in Moga, 19 in Fatehgarh Sahib, four in Amritsar, two in SAS Nagar and one each in ...Vigil on stubble burning in New Town from todayedit
The Times of India – Online
Teams of resistance group parties (RG party) will start keeping a vigil across New Town from Friday to prevent stubble burning that has been causing air pollution in the township. A meeting of stakeholders, including Eco Park management, police, local NGO and others, was held on Thursday to chalk out a plan as to how the teams will work. The stakeholders will be visiting a few spots for physical verification on Friday where stubble burning has been rampant.
Volunteers engaged by the New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA) will be divided in groups to keep a watch and identify those committing the nuisance. Over the last fortnight, stubble and grass on large open spaces ...Power From Biomass, Bio-Energy, Compost: How Other Countries Manage The Issue Of Stubble Burningedit
Swarajya – Online
The problem of stubble burning on paddy farms continues this year too despite various measures being undertaken by the Union and state governments.
As the stubble burning leads to air pollution and affects the national capital Delhi badly, the issue has assumed global significance with many embassies of nations such as the US, UK and others taking note of it in view of the health hazard it causes to its staff.