-Business Standard Currently, the Department of Agriculture runs two crop insurance schemes, one of which is weather-based The Centre is devising an insurance product for farmers that will guarantee to make good their loss in income from natural calamities for at least seven years. For crops with minimum support prices (MSPs), the loss in income will be based on the MSP; for others, it will be calculated based on the average market...

-Scidev.net   * Black carbon and ozone in the atmosphere may cause India's wheat and rice crops to decline * Black carbon interferes with radiation reaching the earth while ozone is toxic to plants * Crop yield decline from pollutants may not be as large as projected by model THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Atmospheric pollutants may impact India's major crops like wheat and rice more than temperature rise, says a new study based on a ‘regression model'...

-The Hindu Business Line Mehsana (Gujarat): A monocropping culture, driven by healthy returns, threatens to hurt cotton farmers in Mehsana and other districts in the country's largest cotton-producing State, say agriculture experts working in the region. As the price of cotton slips due to excess supply and China scaling back on purchases, farmers in north Gujarat risk mounting their losses and the likelihood of reduced sowing in May. They had increased cotton...

-The Indian Express Having decontrolled petrol and diesel, the government's next focus is on containing fertiliser subsidies. Key to this is decontrol of urea and ushering in a system of crediting subsidy payments directly into the bank accounts of farmers. HARISH DAMODARAN explains the existing subsidy regime and the road ahead. * What's so special about urea decontrol? Urea is the only fertiliser whose maximum retail price (MRP) is still fixed...

-The United Nations Knowledge of agricultural genetic resources needs to grow more quickly because of the critical role they have to play in feeding the world as climate change advances faster than expected, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). As the FAO's Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture starts its biennial meeting today, the Organization has sounded a warning that much more must be done to...