1819 IST, Sunday, July 20, 2014 
Agriculture/Energy
Green boon: Fast-growing trees help save forestsBy Rahul Chhabra
They look like normal eucalyptus trees up to 65 feet tall with a trunk girth of about 19 cm and towering over their peers in an evaluation trial on the foothills of Himalayas here. They are hybrids, progenies of two high-growth species of eucalyptus parent trees. |
Organic veggies from Bihar bound for EuropeBy Imran Khan
Farmers of a village in Bihar's Nalanda district are planning to go global. Potatoes, pumpkins, garlics, chillis and ladyfingers, among other vegetables, produced in Sohdih village are all set to make their way to kitchens in Europe. |
Himachal reaps a bountiful guchhi cropBy Vishal Gulati
Its production has been bountiful after a long gap, owing to heavy snow last winter in the mid hills where it grows naturally. The snow, followed by hail and thundershowers, made conditions ideal for this crop, experts say. |
Making women financially independentBy Sreeparna Chakrabarty
Poverty-stricken women in some parts of the country have found succour in a government scheme that provides financial help to set up small businesses and skill-based training to make them financially independent. |
Committed to food security law: Government
The government is committed to enacting the National Food Security Bill, which legally entitles poor families to five kilograms of subsidised grain per person per month, an official document said. |
Himachal park set for Unesco's natural heritage statusBy Vishal Gulati
India's richest biodiversity site in the western Himalayas, the Great Himalayan National Park (GHNP) in Himachal Pradesh, is likely to become the country's seventh natural Unesco World Heritage site, a wildlife official said. |
For every girl child born, they plant 111 treesBy Mahim Pratap Singh / The Hindu
In an atmosphere where every morning, our newspapers greet us with stories of girls being tormented, raped, killed or treated like a doormat in one way or another, trust India's “village republics” to bring in some good news from time to time. |
Delhi : The Forest CityBy Rudraneil Sengupta / Mint & The Wall Street Journal
Can you believe we are still in the city?” K.S. Gopi Sundar asks with a wide smile. “This place is almost unbelievable.” A research scientist with the US-headquartered International Crane Foundation, Sundar leads a programme in India documenting the habitats of the Sarus crane. But it’s not the lanky, dancing bird that’s making Sundar happy. The reason for his joy is that 10 minutes by foot from his apartment in south Delhi, Sundar can enter Sanjay Van, a dense urban woodland, and spend hours watching a dazzling variety of birds. “Delhi has such extensive forests,” he says, “that you even get to see birds you’d never normally see in a city.”
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Water for the gods - now being conserved in templesBy Anil Sharma
An astrologer and social activist has turned the religious practice of offering water and milk in temples into a unique way of water conservation. Pandit Purushotam Gaur, known as Guruji, has developed water harvesting infrastructure in more than 300 temples in Rajasthan in central India over the past 13 years. |
This Andhra village has lessons to teachBy Anurag Dey
If India lives in its villages, then the model it perhaps must follow is Gangadevipalli, a hamlet in Andhra Pradesh's Warangal district where every house has the bare necessities of life, and more. |
Agriculture and agro industries remain crucial to India's growing economy. Agriculture and allied sectors contribute nearly 22 per cent of GDP, while about 65-70 per cent of the population is dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. 
