Today's Links

1. Vertical Farms for Food & Restoration
SustainableBusiness.com - Huntington Station,NY,USA
Over the past three years, he's focused on the effects of agriculture on the environment. He gave the class a project: pretend you're a community of 50000 ...

2. Sure, everyone has to eat, but 'dot-corns' may be peaking
Globe and Mail - Canada
The "dot-corn" bubble may be about to burst as farmland prices spike and agriculture stocks rise even faster than Internet shares did in the late 1990s, ...

3. India - Promises to keep
By sri(sri)
"the strategy for revitalising agriculture has yet to show visible outcomes. The record food production this year needs to be balanced with a modest projected 2 per cent growth in agriculture by the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council. Agricultural productivity needs to substantially rise since the average yield of rice in India between 2003 and 2005 according to the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) was 3,034 kg a hectare compared to 6,233 kg a hectare in China, while for wheat the figures were 2,688 kg a hectare for India compared to 4,155 kg a hectare for China, while for rapeseed and mustard India averaged 909 kg/hectare compared to China’s 1,778 kg/hectare. Similarly the divergence between India and China in horticulture has also increased sharply in recent years with China producing 450 million tonnes of fruits and vegetables compared to our 135 million tonnes. The EAC report also believes “that old tired excuses of substandard agricultural performance are not valid because Indian agriculture is placed favourably when compared to China in terms of quantity of arable land (161 million hectares vs. 130 million hectares), irrigated land (55.8 million hectares vs. 54.5 million hectares), average farm size (1.4 hectares vs. 0.4 hectares).”
Improving productivity involves a quantum change in application of improved technology with water economical cropping pattern, innovating drought-resistant seed strains, improving marketing outlets, reducing wastage arising from absence of cold chains, deeper penetration of formal credit to farmers and improved coordination between the Centre and the States particularly in harnessing the comparative strengths of various regional and climatic zones. No action has been taken on the recommendations of the Swaminathan Committee on revamping of agricultural research. The rural roads programme is running behind target. Cold Storage and Cold Chains remain inadmissible for priority sector lending. Our approach remains excessively anchored to multiple subsidies instead of altering the context enabling infrastructure. "