The social, environmental and economic destruction that results from the plunder of land in Bangladesh by the shrimp industry is pitiful.

Irrigation of fertile plains of Punjab and Haryana has benefited the nation with increase in food production, there have been inevitable side effects, in terms of secular degradation of the soil productivity, due to the exacerbating problem of waterlogging and salinization of soils, which now affects thousands of hectares of agricultural land.

On the

Soil salinity and falling global prices push farmers to agriculture An increasing number of shrimp farmers in Bangladesh are going back to paddy farming. They don

There has been growing concern over conversion of coastal rice paddies to shrimp farms. This study estimates the external cost of shrimp-induced salinity on crop production by comparing two villages in southern India: Poovam, which is affected by salinity, with Thiruvettakudy, which is not.

Large tracts of paddy fields have been inundated and about 35 wells in Kushem Waddo, Aldona, has been polluted by the flow of saline water, as the 250-metre bundh near ferry wharf in Corjuem (Aldona) has breached at seven places.

The D.C.O. Matiari Dr Baqaullah Unar has put a ban on paddy cultivation throughout the district, directing the agriculture officials to guide the growers to switch over to alternative crops. He asked the concerned authorities to take strict measures to restrict rice cultivation.

Production of organic rice is a necessity of the present era. Hence, development of high-yielding rice varieties, suitable for a salinity stress area which is naturally an organic production system like the

Soil scientists and agronomists revealed that salinity has started rising in the agriculture fields with indiscriminate and unwise using of salt in the country's northwestern region creating an apprehension of detrimental impact to soil nutrients and fertility.

When the tsunami struck the coast of Tamil Nadu four years ago, the village of Poompuhar in Sirkali taluk of Nagapattinam district as one of the worst affected. When the waves withdrew, more than death stalked the coastline. With livelihoods and homes gone, Nagapattinam was a land of the living dead.

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