-Livemint.com Rainfall in the entire country in August has seen a deficit of 23% so far, according to IMD data New Delhi: A patch of red signifying deficit rains, cutting across the length of India from Haryana in the north to Kerala in the south, is threatening to worsen farm distress, shows rainfall data from the India Meteorological Department (IMD). The June to September south-west monsoon which irrigates over half of India’s crop...

-Deccan Chronicle The slogan was that there would never again be scarcity of food because we can now make “bread from air”. There are two distinct futures of food and farming. One leads to a dead end. A dead planet: poisons and chemical monocultures spreading; farmers committing suicide due to debt for seeds and chemicals; children dying due to lack of food; people dying because of chronic diseases spreading due to nutritionally empty, toxic...

-The New Indian Express BHAWANIPATNA: Cotton will be raised on 55,000 hectares (ha) of land in the current kharif season across Kalahandi, one of the major cotton growing districts in the State. With weather being conducive, sowing of cotton seeds has been completed on 45,550 ha and by next week, coverage will exceed the targeted area, said agriculture officials. Each hectare gives a yield of eight to 10 quintals. Kalahandi district contributes...

-BusinessWorld.in There simply are no easy solutions to the crisis in Indian agriculture, a product of decades of neglect and poor policies It is quite macabre, really — the barely concealed glee that seems to course through liberal analysts and intellectuals whenever it looks like Prime Minister Narendra Modi is heading for trouble. Macabre, because as the latest series of protests and events centred around farmers show, it is as ghoulish as...

-IANS Dubbed the Kadwanchi model, the watershed project has given farmers year-round access to water. Jalna: When massive crop failure and farmers’ suicide afflicted the Marathwada region in Maharashtra during the 2012-16 drought, farmers in three villages of Jalna district were not much concerned about the lack of rainfall. A watershed project had obviated their need to look at the heavens every season. Enough water was available in the 1,888 hectares area comprising...