Harish Damodaran

3 days ago | indianexpress.com | Harish Damodaran

Farmers, like all businessmen, are rational and risk-averse. Everything else being the same, they will choose to grow crops that offer reasonable price as well as yield assurance. No surprise, then, that rice and wheat are their most preferred crops – more so when they have access to basic irrigation that can supplement natural rainfall. Between 2015-16 and 2024-25, the area planted under rice has increased from 29.8 to 32.4 lakh hectares (lh) in Punjab, while from 10.5 lh to 47 lh in Telangana.

1 week ago | indianexpress.com | Harish Damodaran

Agriculture is a source of food, feed, fibre and fuel. Take cotton: The raw kapas bolls that farmers harvest yield not just the white fluffy fibres or lint. They also contain seeds, from which edible oil (food) is extracted. The residual protein-rich cake after oil extraction is used as a feed ingredient for cattle and poultry. But it is the fourth ‘F’ – as fuel – that’s creating ripples, if not consternation, among existing user industries. This is especially so with maize.

1 week ago | indianexpress.com | Harish Damodaran

How should India ensure the conservation of its indigenous cattle breeds — whether those reared for milk (Gir, Red Sindhi, Sahiwal and Tharparkar) or for both milch and draught purposes (Kankrej, Ongole, Rathi, Deoni, Hariana, Mewati and Dangi)?

2 weeks ago | indianexpress.com | Harish Damodaran

The Green Revolution has been synonymous with chemical fertilisers, tractors, and high-yielding seeds. Growth in their sales is considered a reliable proxy indicator for the performance of the farm sector. By that yardstick, 2024-25 was a good year for Indian agriculture, in which both tractors and fertilisers notched up impressive sales growth.

3 weeks ago | indianexpress.com | Harish Damodaran

The last El Niño – from around April 2023 to May 2024 – was not only a long, but also strong event. Sea surface temperatures (SST) in the Pacific Ocean waters off the coasts of Ecuador and Peru rose up to 2 degrees Celsius above the 30-year average for this region in some months. That was way higher than the minimum threshold, of 0.5 degrees Celsius or more positive SST departure from normal, for classification as an El Niño event.