Media Monitor
Agriculture Industry
Tech solutions take root in Indian farmsedit
China Daily – Online
Startups and venture capital are pouring into what might seem an unlikely place: India’s vast, outdated agriculture industry.
Entrepreneurs are now selling farmers apps to connect them to big buyers nationwide and using artificial intelligence, or 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.
Stubble Burning
In New Delhi, burning season makes the air even more dangerous. Can anything be done?edit
National Geographic – Online
It’s that time of year again. The time when, in the Indian capital of New Delhi, we shutter doors and windows to the grey-orange gloom and switch on our air purifiers, resigned to the deathly annual smog hanging over us, just like it has for years.
Cars, coal-fired power plants, and cookstoves keep New Delhi reliably near the top of the list of the world’s most polluted cities. But the haze is especially bad each autumn, when a cloud of smoke blows in from the northwestern states of Punjab and Haryana. Beginning in late September, rice farmers there burn their fields to clear them for the next crop, wheat.
Stubble fire solution will take time, says air panel chiefedit
The Times of India – Online
Acknowledging that stubble burning has contributed to a dip in Delhi-NCR’s air quality, Dr M M Kutty, who was recently appointed the chairperson of the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) in National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas, underlined the need to contain farm fires at the earliest. “There is no doubt that the region is witnessing more stubble burning incidents. According to our data, in Punjab, 62,844 farm fires were observed from September 21 to November 9 this year compared to 45,265 fires in 2019 during the same period. The air quality in the region has deteriorated because of the farm fires, which are a major contributor to pollutants. There is a need ...
No more stubble burning! Delhi CM Kejriwal says bio-decomposer trial a success, seeks help from statesedit
IndiaTV – Online
Declaring that the Delhi government has succeeded in finding a solution to the menace of stubble burning, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday said that the bio-decomposer trials have yielded the desired results. The solution, developed by the Indian Agriculture Research Institute (IARI), Pusa, dissolves farm stubble turning them into manure.
Addressing the media during a virtual press conference, Kejriwal said that the Delhi government has tested the solution developed by IARI and that it has shown expected positive results.
The CM said that the bio-decomposer turns the farm residues into manure within 20 days after use.
Underlining that the chemical will be of great help in addressing the issue of air pollution in Delhi due ...
Pusa bio-decomposer: AAP government to approach central bodyedit
The New Indian Express – Online
Buoyed by the success of biodecomposer technique, which converts stubble into manure, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kerjiwal on Friday said that the Delhi government would approach the Air Quality Commission (AQC) seeking directions for other states to adopt the method for prevention of crop residue. The CM said that the bio-decomposer technique developed by the Pusa Agricultural Institute has been a success and the study shows around 70-95% of stubble turns into manure.
“I have with me the report prepared by the scientists of the Pusa Research Institute, assessing the impact of the bio-decomposer technique in 24 villages across Delhi, on a sample basis. According to the scientists, around 70-95% of the stubble decomposed into ...