Feature Article

Mineral status and some physiological parameters of Lannea coromandelica (Houtt) Merr. (Anacardiaceae) were estimated during leaf active growth period. Lannea coromandelica is widely used in afforestation and social forestry programmes to meet the fuelwood and fodder demand as well as to maintain ecological balance and environmental stability. Dec 2007

For long, Hevelie Shohe and her family have been growing upland paddy on their traditional 'jhum' land on the hills of this Sema Naga village of Nagaland, but have had little to save. This autumn, the 45 year old farmer is busy taking care of the jatropha saplings she planted on one hectare of 'jhum' land. She hopes to double her income when they mature and their seeds sold for extraction of green fuel. Dec 2007

In the post-tsunami period, in the midst of hectic relief work, the Social Activities for Rural Development Society (SARDS), an NGO working in the Prakasam district of Andhra Pradesh, made a startling discovery. While every government and voluntary agency in the area was bending over backwards to offer relief to the fishing community, the 35,000 odd salt making community in the district was left totally out of the ambit of all relief and aid work. Dec 2007

Starvation deaths are headline grabbers. But when an entire community lives on the brink of starvation through out the year it rarely merits a mention. One such group, the Musahars in Uttar Pradesh light their chula once a day, in the evening, and live on one meal. Dec 2007

About 60% area of Kandhamal district in Orissa is covered under forest. It is inhabited mostly by scheduled tribes (kondha) and scheduled caste people.The livestock population is quite high, but the health care for livestock is very meager. Hardly any veterinary aid reaches the remote tribal villages. However, farmers have their own methods of curing livestock diseases. Dec 2007

Traditional farming practices have been developed by agrarian societies in particular ecological setting. Sustainability in these systems has been derived after a long tenure through trial and error with crops and practices. Most of the practices of traditional farmers for disease management in developing countries consist of cultural control. Some of the traditional practices of practical importance adopted by the farmers of semiarid and arid Rajasthan which include districts of Barmer, Jodhpur, Pali and Jaipur are discussed in this paper. Dec 2007

Koyilandi municipality, 30 km from Kozhikode, Kerala is grabbing attention as a model of excellence in civic services in a state bogged down by inefficiency, lack of direction and corruption. Koyilandi was the first town in Kerala to take the plastic-free campaign seriously with a padayatra by Municipality Chairman K Dasan himself three years ago.

Sugarcane farmers in Alnavar near Dharwad in Karnataka state are no more worried about the insect

In Bangladesh, the first Farmer Field Schools were organised in the early 1990s, assisted by the FAO inter-country programme for IPM in rice. After initial positive experiences, several other donors (UNDP, CARE-Bangladesh and DANIDA) started projects to spread IPM to hundreds of thousands of farmers through IPM Farmer Field Schools. All these projects included season-long Training of Trainers courses to develop skilled FFS facilitators. Through this continuous support over the past ten

The Farmer Field School (FFS) approach has become wellknown after the positive experiences seen in Indonesia and other Asian countries. In this article we describe how the "conventional' IPM Farmer Field School approach has been modified in the South Indian dryland agriculture context, in order to suit the needs and problems of farmers in this area. Dec 2007