The role of urban agriculture in global food security is a topic of increasing discussion. Existing research on urban and peri-urban agriculture consists largely of case studies that frequently use disparate definitions of urban and peri-urban agriculture depending on the local context and study objectives. This lack of consistency makes quantification of the extent of this practice at the global scale difficult.

The Drought-Prone Areas Programme and the Desert Development Programme launched by the Government of India during the 1970s used rainfall and irrigation as the two criteria to ameliorate the impact of drought in the targeted districts. This article revisits the eligibility criteria in light of the recent climatic classification and irrigation statistics.

The Twelfth Plan proposals for a new approach to the water resources management as put forward in the article by Mihir Shah (EPW, 19 January 2013) are a bold recognition of the serious problems in the area. But some of the author’s ideas are less than convincing and the entire set of physical interventions that has been recommended seems to refl ect a worryingly simplistic understanding of the realities of hydrology and hydrogeology. A comment and a response.

An understanding of the dynamics of soil organic carbon (SOC) as affected by farming practices is imperative for maintaining soil productivity and mitigating global warming. The objectives of this study were to investigate the effects of long-term fertilization on SOC and SOC fractions for the whole soil profile (0–100 cm) in northwest China.