-The Times of India RAJKOT: A farmer Janak Patel in Abharampara village of Amreli district has seen his entire sowing on 40 bigha land going waste. He had anticipated rainfall within 30 days of sowing. However, monsoon did not keep its date with the state. "I had sown cotton in 40 bigha land 30 days ago thinking that rain would come on time. But all has gone waste," said Patel adding that...

-Down to Earth As June ends, the monsoon, it turns out, is deficient by 40 per cent. Despite the forecast of its revival in July, it is a concern for India's rainfed areas that account for significant foodgrain production and also host the largest number of farmers in the country. More than 100 districts are officially "chronic drought-affected" areas. Why have we not been able to drought-proof them? On June 28 Prime...

-The Tribune The community has to pay the cost of environmental degradation if sustainable agricultural practices are not followed. Food can also be produced by in-built provisions for ecological services. For this, sustainability issues have to be addressed with policy support. An ecosystem is a dynamic, complex, functional unit of diverse living organisms, physical environment and humans are its integral part. The wellbeing of mankind depends upon food, water, fibre, medicine, flood...

-Economic and Political Weekly     Sustained and focused efforts have to be made by the Tamil Nadu state government to provide relief and rehabilitation to the drought affected people of the state. S Rajendran (myrajendran@gmail.com) is with the Department of Economics, Periyar University, Salem, Tamil Nadu. Due to the failure of the north-east monsoon in December 2013, Tamil Nadu is witnessing drought like conditions this year, leading to poor agricultural productivity, rural distress,...

-The Hindustan Times Jaipur: Keeping in view the possibility of poor monsoon this year, the state agriculture department has submitted a contingency crop plan - Kharif 2014 -to the disaster and relief department. In the plan, the agriculture department has suggested that through proper technical guidance to farmers loss in agricultural production could be curbed in case of weak or non-uniform monsoon in the state. The department has given various suggestions including...