Agriculture
I’ve had a relationship with islands since I was a young man. My attraction has not been to the clichéd tropical fantasy of palm trees and white sand: it is something deeper - island as metaphor for our existence on Earth, representing independence and interdependence, natural limits and boundless space. Island as paradox.
Living on an island as I have the last ten years, I’ve…
As yet another example of the desperate ‘science’ of Monsanto, it is now being argued that genetically engineered Bt cotton – introduced in India in 1997 – has liberated Indian women. In a paper authored by Arjunan Subramanian, Kerry Kirwan, David Pink and MatinQaim, the argument is that the crop produces massive gains for women’s employment in India.
But this argument is false…
Did you know: the estimated diversity of beans varieties is 2,000; that of tomatoes are 6,000; while that of rice is a staggering 20,000? Sadly, we have access to only a few commercially grown vegetables – so uniform, pesticide-laced, waxed with chemicals and deceptively attractive. The loss of biological diversity, particularly in the "gene-rich" countries of the Third World, undermines the very essence of sustainable…
Organic farming is coming under attack from many quarters, even as awareness spreads that it is integral to a more sustainable and healthier way of life. Criticism ranges from doubts about its lack of capacity to feed the world, to, bogies being raised about people having to return to the ‘dark ages’ of food shortage and starvation unless recourse to intensive chemical farming is…
Why Farmers Need a Pay Rise... The world's farmers need a pay rise - or come the midcentury, the other 8 billion of us may well find we do not have enough to eat, says this Australian journalist By Julian Cribb Globally, and in Australia, food has become too cheap. This is having a wide range of unfortunate– and potentially dangerous – effects, which include:…
One of India’s first organic farmers, Bhaskar Save, believes co-operation is the fundamental law of NatureMasanobu Fukuoka, renowned natural farmer, made several visits to India, a country which inspired more hope in him than his own Japan. On his last visit here, he spent a day at the farm of another remarkable octogenarian, Bhaskar Save, in southernmost coastal Gujarat. Halfway through his bullock cart tour…
In recent years, there has been a serious disconnect between the consumer and the farmer. By the time we finally consume food, not only has it travelled a lot from the plot to the plate, but it has also undergone so many modifications that what we finally get is a mere ‘product’. Many of us would have hardly met or chatted with someone who grows…
The transition from software in Texas to growing food in Wayanad is teaching important lessons on Nature, life and happiness.After puddling a bund in preparation for transplanting rice and taking a dip in the river nearby, I feel great! There’s nothing like some good, creative, physical activity to get me going. Watching the rice plants growing so lush in the nursery gives me immense joy.…
One may wonder what significance an agro-ecological resurgence in Cuba has in India, which is located on the opposite face of the earth; when it’s night here, it’s day there. Cuba is a sparsely inhabited island nation with 74 percent of her people concentrated in a few cities, while India is a near sub-continent populous, poly-cultural and predominantly rural, a land with a ten millennia…