Organic states

the resolve to rid agriculture of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, expressed by Sikkim an year ago, has been given a shot in the arm by Mizoram. The state made history by becoming the first in the country to legislate for turning its entire agricultural produce organic. It passed the Mizoram Organic Farming Act, 2004 on July 12, 2004. Sikkim is yet to pass a similar legislation.

Marvel unearthed

science seems to have inched closer to answering a question that has nagged agriculturists for almost 100 years -- how to make an essential plant nutrient present in the soil available to crops in adequate quantity. A team of us scientists has recently uncovered a plant gene that is involved in transferring phosphate, the nutrient, from soil-dwelling fungi to the plant cells.

Modified and making trouble

since its inception, the agro-biotech industry has had a unique selling proposition -- transgenic crops need lesser herbicides/pesticides than conventional varieties, therefore their use can help control environmental pollution. But a new report indicates that the claim is hollow.

Hot pursuit

the Spices Board India (sbi) in Kochi, Kerala, has identified 43 villages in Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh to grow residue-free chillies using the integrated pest management (ipm) system. The move is a part of the board's strategy to encourage farmers to totally avoid the use of chemicals in the cultivation of chilli to gain greater access to the domestic and international markets.

Crisis brewing

There are worry lines all over the face of M K Bhojan, a small tea grower in the Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu. Tea prices have fallen cataclysmically in the last few years, affecting small farmers like Bhojan most acutely. In 1997-98, one kilogramme (kg) of green tea leaf fetched as much as Rs 21. And it was possible to make Rs 80 from one kg of processed tea at auctions.

Home made potash

india, which entirely depends on import to meet its requirement of two million tonnes of the potassic fertiliser, has taken the first step towards manufacturing the vital plant nutrient. The Bhavnagar-based Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute (csmcri) has developed a technology to produce potash from seawater.

In short

sop to stay: Populism has prevailed over pragmatism. Bowing to pressure exerted from across the political spectrum, Union finance minister Jaswant Singh has rolled back the proposed hike in prices of fertilisers, which he had announced while presenting the Union budget. The minister had suggested that the price of urea be increased by Rs 12, and that of di-ammonium phosphate and muriate of potash by Rs 10 per 50 kilogrammes.

Climate is changing, and the Sundarban residents can feel it

The Sundarban delta region in the Bay of Bengal, with 10,000 square kilometres of estuarine mangrove forest and 102 islands, is the world's largest delta. The land here is an eerie muddle of landmass and sea, with mudflats and waves engaged in unrelenting battle. Constantly lashed by cyclonic storms and the sinking -- or birth -- of landforms, the region is also economically underdeveloped, and poverty here is abject and endemic.

Reclaiming Simple Clod

Soils are a very slow renewable resource. To reclaim them requires, above all, a long-term plan. With falling productivity, the realisation has sunk in that soils cannot be blindly mined, and that humans cannot just plough through the ecology they interact with.

More and more urea

It is ironic that while India ranks third in fertiliser use worldwide, it ranks 14 and 16 respectively in the production of rice and wheat. It is even more ironic that India's fertiliser policy ensures precisely such a result.