-The Hindu Focus on short-duration varieties, crop insurance plan Thiruvananthapuram (Andhra Pradesh): With the southwest monsoon playing truant, the government is working on a disaster management plan to help farmers tide over the possibility of crop failure and the consequent loss. The Department of Agriculture is focussing its efforts on the paddy sector, likely to be the worst affected by a poor monsoon. "With the initial monsoon spell tapering off, transplanting paddy shoots...

-The New Indian Express HYDERABAD: To preserve indigenous seed varieties and also promote organic farming, the state bio-diversity board will soon open over 110 seed banks across the two states. With the requisite budgets sanctioned for this pilot project, the board is all set to start the programme in the coming weeks. The concept is inspired by the activities of a Karnataka-based NGO which was able to do the same in a...

-The Indian Express Healing the sugar sector and curbing inflation need brave reform. The first month of great expectations is over. But no magic is possible in such a short period of time. The treasury is scraping the bottom of the barrel, and reviving growth calls for herculean efforts to put the economy back on the rails. Meanwhile, fears of an impending failure of the monsoon have spiked inflation, which is at...

-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...