-The Business Standard Beni Prasad Verma is wrong. Food inflation hurts more than 70% of Indian farmers  Poor Beni Prasad Verma! In Lucknow on Monday, Mr Verma, who is the Union minister for steel, spoke not on steel, but on inflation — and kicked up a row that his government, already under stress, could have easily done without. Mr Verma argued that higher prices for agricultural goods meant more gains for India’s...

-Frontline A recession-hit world is only just waking up to the prospect of the coming food crisis resulting in a period of political turmoil with unexpected consequences.  For the third time in five years, the world is braced for another food crisis. Bad weather conditions are leading to projections of major production shortfalls in some of the world’s leading food suppliers. Substantially reduced access and sharp price increases are, therefore, expected to...

-The Economic Times A change in the national accounts, slated to take place sometime in the next two years, will show that a resurgent farm sector is now the second biggest contributor to the economy, displacing manufacturing and financial services. The unexpected reversal is not just a statistical artefact. Instead it is an outcome of a change in the terms of trade, the price of agricultural produce compared to industrial output since...

-The Economic Times With a weak monsoon, farmers and farm labour, agri-investors and policy makers, everyone is looking up in the sky and praying for more water to pour. Farm analysts are debating whether this will lead to a drop of 16 million tonnes of foodgrain, as it happened in 2009, or 38 million tonnes, as it did in 2002. NCAER is projecting 20 million tonnes drop in grain production in...

-Reuters Monsoon rains will not be enough to save the country from its first drought in three years, the weather office said on Thursday as it forecast that the El Nino weather pattern should reduce rains again in the second half of the June to September season. India, one of the world's largest food producers and consumers with a population of 1.2 billion, last suffered a drought in 2009, which forced it...