-The Indian Express Farmers have so far sown only 38.91 lakh hectares (lh) under pulses in the current rabi season from October. Dry weather extending to the post-monsoon period has led to reduced plantings of most rabi crops, raising the prospect of a fourth consecutive harvest failure for farmers and also making it more difficult for the RBI to slash interest rates. Farmers have so far sown only 38.91 lakh hectares (lh)...

-Down to Earth A few villages in Haryana successfully grow cotton amid widespread destruction of the crop by whitefly in the region LOOK HERE, the red pest you see is Chrysopa,” says an excited Manisha, while navigating through her cotton field in Haryana’s Nidana village. “A single Chrysopa, a carnivorous pest, eats around 125-150 whiteflies a day,” says the 24-year-old. Further ahead in her 0.8-hectare cotton plantation, she picks another plant leaf...

-DNA The failure of Bt Cotton to ward off pests has pushed farmers to penury The whitefly attack that has devastated the cotton crop in parts of Punjab and Haryana and caused heavy losses to farmers was a disaster that was waiting to happen. Estimates say that some 8 lakh hectare of standing cotton has been destroyed causing damage worth crores of rupees, which has hit farmers hard. This disaster was waiting...

-Livemint.com As many as 23 out of 38 districts have received deficit rain ranging 20-60% of the normal; overall, the 2015 Jun-Sep monsoon recorded a 28% deficit Nitish Kumar, who will take oath as chief minister of Bihar for the third consecutive time, will face a daunting task as he tries to tackle rural distress in the state that has been hit by a drought. The issue had found little mention in the...

-Financial Express The country must double its support to farmers, from the current levels of about 6-8% of the value of agri-output It was in the mid-1980s that the ‘India-Bharat’ phraseology was fist pushed into political jargon, by farmers’ leader Sharad Joshi, with ‘India’ representing the urban elite of the country and ‘Bharat’ synonymous with its neglected rural folk. Joshi, at the time, was leading lakhs of farmers protesting against anti-farmer policies,...