Author Archives: admin

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Business Line, 17 Oct 2018

PANAP study finds unauthorised use of toxic chemicals is rampant in India. More than half of the 53 pesticides commonly used in Indian agriculture are highly hazardous, and two-thirds of those involved in manual spraying do not wear any protective equipment, which exposes them to toxic chemicals, a report released on Wednesday said.

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The Caravan, 4 Oct 2018

On 10 August this year, a California jury ruled that Roundup, the world’s most widely used herbicide, caused the terminal cancer of Dewayne Johnson, who was formerly a groundskeeper of a school near San Francisco. The jury directed Monsanto, the agricultural biotechnology corporation that owns Roundup, to pay Johnson $289 million—Rs 2116 crore—in punitive and compensatory damages. In his court testimony, Johnson said he worked with the herbicide 20–30 times a year and was soaked with the product on at least two occasions. In 2014, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a rare type of cancer.

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BBC, 24 Sep 2018

In 2016, Sikkim, a small state in India’s northeast, was declared the country's first fully organic state. Since then, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has been trying to promote chemical-free farming across the country.

It’s been nearly half a century since the "Green Revolution" introduced modern farming techniques that included the use of pesticides, to make India a self-sufficient food producer.