What to Read in Indian Express Editorial( Topic and Syllabus wise)

EDITORIAL 1: India and the world in dairy

Context

The competitiveness and efficiency of India’s dairy sector is being questioned as the US under Donald Trump pressures India to open its market to American dairy products.

One way to assess competitiveness is prices

• Take corn (maize) as an example: the farmgate price in the US is about $4.5 per bushel (25.4 kg), which, at an exchange rate of Rs 87 per dollar, comes to around Rs 15.4 per kg for the American farmer.
• In contrast, maize is selling at Rs 22–23 per kg in Indian mandis, with the government’s minimum support price set at Rs 24 per kg.
• This shows that US corn farmers are significantly more price competitive than their Indian counterparts, largely due to much higher productivity—over 11 tonnes per hectare in the US compared to just 3.5 tonnes in India.
• But this isn’t the case with milk.

Price competitiveness in milk

• The US has a Federal Milk Marketing Order (FMMO) system. Under it, processors (“handlers”) have to pay a minimum price for the raw milk they procure from dairy farmers.
• The price is fixed every month for four uniform “classes” of milk: Class I (for sale as fluid/beverage milk), Class II (for making ice-cream, yogurt, sour cream and other soft dairy products), Class III (for cheese) and Class IV (for butter and milk powder).
• In July 2025, the average farmgate price of milk in the US was about Rs 36.7 per litre. This is similar to the Rs 34 per litre that dairies in Maharashtra are paying Indian farmers for the same quality of milk, showing that Indian milk prices are just as competitive as those in the US.
• Compared to Europe, Indian milk is even more competitive. In the European Union, farmers received around Rs 55.6 per litre in July.
• Simply put, the milk prices received by Indian farmers are marginally below that in the US and New Zealand, while substantially lower than what European producers get.

India’s dairy sector

• Milk yields in India are poor by western standards.
• The low yields notwithstanding, the production cost of milk in India isn’t that high because dairying is comparatively labour-intensive: Cows have to be fed and milked multiple times daily, besides being bathed regularly along with removal of dung and cleaning of their sheds.
• In addition, labour is required for planting, harvesting and storing fodder and feed.
• Although dairy farms in the West have significantly automated these operations — through milking machines, forage harvesters and balers, feeding robots, sensor-based cattle health monitoring, hot water high-pressure cleaners and bulk coolers — the low cost of labour makes it still cheaper to produce milk in India.
• Milk has a higher labour cost component relative to corn, soyabean or wheat.
• But, Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) and other Indian dairies show high processing and marketing efficiency, with farmers receiving 55–57% of the consumer price—much higher than the 35% share US farmers get.
• This efficiency comes from streamlined procurement, processing, and distribution, allowing cooperatives like GCMMF to share a larger portion of the retail price with farmers.

The challenge

• India’s price competitiveness in milk, as noted, derives primarily from the low cost of labour.That includes unpaid family labour having few employment avenues outside of agriculture.
• Dairy farmers in India typically aim to cover only their direct costs, without accounting for the value of family labor or owned land, but this approach may become unsustainable as labor becomes scarcer and more expensive.
• Unlike New Zealand’s pasture-based system and the US’s automated farms, India lacks abundant grazing land and faces high capital and energy costs.

Way forward

• The future of Indian dairying may lie in a different model of selective mechanisation, boosting milk yields through genetic improvement and new breeding technologies, and on-farm cultivation of high-tonnage protein-rich green fodder grasses.
• The focus has to be on reducing the cost of milk production so as to maintain the global competitiveness of India’s dairy sector, which cannot be based on cheap labour alone.

 

EDITORIAL 2: Artic sea-ice melting has slowed, but here’s why this isn’t good news

Context

For more than half a century, the melting of sea ice in the Arctic has been among the most well-known indicators of climate change. But a new study has revealed that the pace of sea ice loss has slowed down in the past 20 years.

Why has Arctic sea ice loss slowed down in the last 20 years?

• It has long been established that human activities — primarily, the burning of fossil fuels that emits heat-trapping greenhouse gases (GHG) — have led to a rise in global temperatures. In the Arctic, this warming has led to the melting of sea ice.
• Research has shown that the region has lost more than 10,000 cubic kilometres of sea ice since the 1980s
• Anthropogenic global warming,however, does not do away with natural variations in the Earth’s climate system (although it can affect these).
• One such variation is the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO),which refers to a fluctuation in sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the equatorial Pacific Ocean that occurs every two to seven years.
• ENSO influences, alters, and interferes with global atmospheric circulation, which, in turn, influences the weather worldwide.
• England suggests that natural climate variations, such as the PacificDecadal Oscillation and Atlantic Multidecadal Variability, could be contributing to the slowdown in Arctic sea ice melting.

Decadal Oscillation and Atlantic Multidecadal Variability

• The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV) are two major climate phenomena that involve long-term fluctuations in ocean temperatures, but they occur in different ocean basins and on slightly different timescales.
• The PDO is a pattern of warming and cooling in the North Pacific Ocean, oscillating over periods of 5 to 20 years.
• The AMV is a mode of variability in the North Atlantic, characterized by sea surface temperature changes over roughly 60-year cycles.
• These two modes can influence global weather patterns, and recent research suggests they also interact and modulate each other through the atmosphere.
• These long-term fluctuations can bring unusually cool waters into the Arctic, reducing sea ice loss or even causing expansion in some regions.
• According to the study, the melt rate over the past 20 years has been around 0.35 square kilometres per decade, compared to the peak rate between 1993 and 2012, which was at least four times higher, closer to 1.3 million square kilometres per decade.

Does this mean that climate change is also slowing down?

• Humans continue to release unprecedented levels of GHG into the atmosphere, and mean global temperatures continue to rise.
• There is thus no indication that the slower Arctic sea ice melting implies that climate change is also slowing down.
• 2024 was the warmest year for India and the world. But why was warming lower over India?
• Studies also revealed that the current slowdown is only temporary and there is a 50% chance that it lasts for five more years, and a 25% chance that it lasts another 10 years.
• The study highlights that once the slowdown stops, there is a risk of a more rapid decline in sea ice cover in the coming years.

Conclusion

The loss of sea ice in the Arctic would have far-reaching consequences. It will exacerbate global warming, lead to further rise of sea levels, and present unprecedented challenges to ecosystems that are dependent on sea ice.