-The Hindu Business Line The proposed crop insurance overhaul is a welcome step The Centre’s move to come out with a new crop insurance policy has not come a moment too soon. The initiative seems keen to address two main impediments to enhance the coverage of crop insurance — high rates of premium under the Modified National Agriculture Insurance Scheme (MNAIS), particularly in relation to the sum insured, and inaccuracies in estimating...

-Livemint.com The money came from the Centre, which in April revised the amount farmers get as relief for crop damage New Delhi: Two weeks before 2015 ended, 50-year-old Sukhrani received a new year’s gift from the Uttar Pradesh government. The local revenue officer visited her village in Banda district of Uttar Pradesh to hand out cheques to families whose winter crop was damaged due to unseasonal rains between February and April...

-PTI New Delhi: Wheat production in India, the world’s second-largest producer, is likely to fall below 90 million tonnes for the second year in a row in 2015-16 due to an unusually dry and warm winter. Wheat output had declined to 88.95 mt in 2014-15 due to a poor monsoon and unseasonal rains in February-March, as against a record 95.85 mt achieved in the previous year. Sowing of wheat, a major rabi (winter)...

-The Times of India Ramesh Chand has spent over three decades in farm research and teaching agricultural economics and policy. He has now been appointed as a key member of the NITI Aayog to prepare a blueprint for the revival of the agricultural sector. In an interview to TOI, Chand talks about prices, rural distress, role of cutting edge technology and the need for state run institutions in the farm sector....

-Hindustan Times Wheat, the country’s winter staple, has hit hurdles, with farmers unable to sow the normal area and instances of a dreaded fungus attack being reported from some parts of Punjab and Haryana, raising concerns of a lower output. Summer foodgrain output fell 1.7% at 124.05 million tonne, according to the government’s first of the four quarterly estimates due to a crippling back-to-back drought. This has hurt farm incomes, which support...