Field day

What is soil? Nothing but simple clod, always taken for granted. But dig deeper, and you will find that this simple clod generates complex equations of survival and wealth, equity and polity. It is a big little ecological variable. Its influences remain hidden from us.

Is the joyride over ?

It's been 50 years since politicians have been mouthing the slogan: Jai jawan, jai kisan (Long live soldiers, long live farmers). Now it has started to sound like a raucous chant, at least to the farmers struggling to survive. They till the soil harder, increase their spending to replenish their patch of land, but nothing helps. It is the marriage between science and farming practices that has failed. The more they try to revive it, the more they get mired in the labyrinth.

Don't bite that apple!

WHEN GOD forbade Adam and Eve from eating the apples from the Tree of Knowledgehe probably had environmental interests in mind. But Eve couldn't resist the temptationand neither could Adam. Too bad. The price for their folly is still being paid.

Letters

Issues over tea

A revolution gone awry

In the early 1990s, hospitals in Sri Lanka’s North Central Province, the main agricultural region of the country, started reporting an unusually high incidence of chronic renal failure. About 5,000 persons reported ill in 1993. By 2009, the disease assumed epidemic proportions. That year over 9,000 patients from North Central and its neighbouring Uva and North Western provinces were under treatment in Anuradhapura Hospital alone. The disease, which often requires kidney transplant in its last stage, has since been a leading cause of deaths in the region.

Letters

Know Betel Farmers Of Tamil Nadu

Farmers quit mentha

IT IS back to square one for the farmers of Jalaun district in Uttar Pradesh. Reeling under persistent drought from 2003-08, they were driven to mentha (mint) cultivation that promised good returns. Instead, it increased debts. Cultivation of this water-intensive crop is fast shrinking due to depletion of groundwater and no alternative source of irrigation in drought-prone Bundelkhand region of the state.

Letters

For tiger’s sake

Fertilizers acidify soils

SOILS, too, must endure acidity. Each plant and soil life form has a particular soil pH it is used to. Any change can lead to complications in the organism’s metabolism. For example, decrease in pH modifies the top soils—a major source of crop nutrients.

Government’s April 1 gift to farmers

On february 18, the Centre announced nutrient-based subsidies (NBS) for fertilizers as promised in last year’s budget. Now individual nutrients in the fertilizer like nitrogen will be subsidized, rather than the end product. The new system will be effective from April 1. The government will control only urea’s retail price; its price has been hiked from Rs 4,830 to Rs 5,310 per tonne from April 1.