-The Hindustan Times Mumbai: In the past two decades, the National Crime Records Bureau has recorded 60,750 farmer suicides in the state. This means more than 3,000 farmers have killed themselves every year, reflecting a deepening agrarian crisis untouched by policies and subsidies doled out by the government. To get the state back on its feet, the new BJP government needs to start from agriculture and allied sectors. In the past...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The government on Wednesday recast the almost defunct Prime Minister's council on climate change, a move seen as an effort to handle climate issues pro-actively from the top. The revamped body is to meet soon to take key policy decisions ahead of the Lima climate conference next month. Environmentalist Sunita Narain has been dropped from the body - an apparent reflection of the Centre's discomfiture with...

Despite high prices of fruits and vegetables, India's area under horticultural crops - mainly fruits, vegetables, spices and flowers - has doubled in around twenty years (between 1991-92 and 2012-13). This has resulted in increase in production of horticultural crops nearly threefold (2.8 times). A new report from the Ministry of Agriculture says that the area under horticultural crops during this period rose from 12.77 million hectares to 23.69 million...

-The Times of India LONDON: Majority of the $3 billion spent by the world's leading philanthropic organization - the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on finding solutions around improved agricultural yield to benefit the world's poorest and hungry people, has been spent in the US, Britain and other rich developed nations. Grain, a research group based in Barcelona said on Tuesday that over 80% of the grants were given to organizations in...

-Deccan Chronicle Kochi (Kerala): The man who started the first hi-tech farm in Kerala is perhaps closer to achieving his dream of helping the state become self-reliant in vegetable cultivation. Shivdas B. Menon, who quit a plush corporate job some 25 years ago to set up a business in agriculture technology here, believes that in another two to three years, Malayalis will be able to celebrate Onam with safe-to-eat vegetables grown...