A third factor has led to the current debility of soils in India: irrigation. That is to say, water over-use. To feed the rice-wheat mentality, net irrigated area rose from 20.8 million ha in 1950 to

The domino effect of bad policy-making and its fallout

Soils are a very slow renewable resource. To reclaim them requires, above all, a long-term plan. With falling productivity, the realisation has sunk in that soils cannot be blindly mined, and that

Nineteen soil profiles representing seven soil series with sixteen mapping units were collected, described and mapped at Indian Institute of Spices Research, Cardamom Research Centre, Appangala, Madikeri, Karnataka for evaluating their suitability for cardamom cultivation. Soil and site properties such as climate, depth and the soils were assessed for growing cardamom.

Cost of production has spiralled, but the rate of increase in production has not shown a similar trend. Ecological and social costs, meanwhile, are totally disregarded