-PTI Amid reports that potato and onion farmers were dumping their produce due to fall in prices, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar today assured Parliament that a scheme is in place to share the loss incurred by the growers.  The Agriculture Ministry implements a Market Intervention Scheme (MIS), after it receives proposals from state government on the need for procurement of agricultural and horticultural crops, Pawar said in a reply to a query...

-FAO FAO today forecast that 2012 world wheat production will be the second highest on record at 690 million tonnes and also announced that  international food prices rose one percent in February —  the second increase in two months.  Published today, FAO’s quarterly Crop Prospects and Food Situation report forecast a 2012 wheat crop 10 million tonnes or 1.4 percent down from the record 2011 harvest but still well above the average...

-The Hindu Business Line   Hubli: Radiation and chemical-induced mutation and subsequent use in recombination breeding at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) has resulted in the release of 39 improved crop varieties in oilseeds and pulses in India, said Dr Ratan Kumar Sinha, Director, BARC, Mumbai. Delivering the 25th Annual Convocation address of the University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, Karnataka, Dr Sinha said nuclear techniques in agriculture is particularly helpful in creating new...

-The Telegraph A group of eminent individuals has written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asking him to initiate a “truly inclusive process of deliberation” to help formulate a rational public policy on nuclear power and genetically modified (GM) crops. Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, a former Supreme Court judge, and 16 others, including former scientists and administrators, have also questioned Singh’s remarks to a US journal last month suggesting that foreign non-government organisations...

'Erratic rainfall and rising input costs forcing farmers to migrate' “Unable to clear a loan of Rs 2 lakh, my son committed suicide. I had to sell my ancestral house and cattle to repay the loan,” says Lakshmi Devi, 48, of Pathakotha Cheruvu village in Andhra Pradesh’s Anantapur district. Devi's woes did not end with the repayment of loan. Managing her farm is becoming increasingly difficult, partly because it is expensive,...