Media Monitor
Agriculture Industry
India’s women farmers are losing jobs and savings despite the boom in agricultureedit
Scroll – India
“A day’s farm work pays about Rs 250 but women earn even less, sometimes around Rs 100,” said Kranti Azad, 27, a farmer from Devlaha village in Ayodhya, 135 km east of Lucknow. “But now that those who work in the cities are back, women’s daily earnings are almost down to Rs 50.” Like Azad, millions of women for whom agriculture is the only source of income in rural India are now struggling with diminished savings and lost livelihood opportunities. Though the pandemic led to a recession in India, agriculture has managed to grow, with the Reserve Bank of India describing the sector as the “bright spot” in the economy. But despite undiminished farm output, agricultural ...
This woman from Gujarat makes clothes from the waste from cropsedit
Navbharat Times – Online
Have you ever thought that weeds from crops can also make wonderful clothes? Yes, there is a startup in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, which is working to convert waste from crops into cloth with the help of circular technology. The name of this startup is AltMat, whose founder Shikha Shah told news agency ANI why he chose to make clothes from agriculture waste.” Humans use 11 million tonnes of fibers such as polyester, cotton and man-made cellulose to manufacture clothing,” she explains. Polyester is a source of plastics and microplastics which are hazardous to both environment and health. He further said, ‘Man-made cellulose contains rayon, which causes deforestation and its chemical processing is also harmful to the ...
Stubble Burning
Airpocalypse coming: Stop farm fires. Prioritise public health & economyedit
The Times Of India – Online
The resultant delayed kharif harvest was uncomfortably close to rabi sowing. This prompted farmers into stubble burning instead of other labour- or machine-intensive methods to remove paddy stalk residues left by combine harvesters (better suited for western monocropped lands), saving them money, effort and time. Machines like happy seeders, balers, mulchers, rotavators introduced for stubble management aren’t finding enough takers despite being heavily subsidised. Farmers complain these still incur significant operational costs. Delhi NCR is north India’s largest economic powerhouse and one of Earth’s largest urban agglomerations. Few other democracies will let such policy tangles linger when they hurt economic interests, quality of life and public health outcomes. Carrot-and-stick approaches to incentivise and ...
Punjab: Special task force to check stubble burning in 10 districtsedit
Hindustan Times – Online
The Punjab government will deploy a special task force in 10 red-category districts, each of which witnessed over 4,000 stubble burning incidents during the previous paddy harvesting season, for strict enforcement and regulatory measures in the upcoming season. Nodal officers will also be appointed at village, cluster, tehsil and district levels to keep air pollution in check for containing the spread of respiratory diseases in view of the Covid-19 pandemic. The red-category districts are Sangrur, Bathinda, Ferozepur, Moga, Muktsar, Patiala, Mansa, Tarn Taran, Barnala and Ludhiana.