-The Deccan Chronicle Kollam (Kerala): Kulasekharapuram, a small panchayat on the border of Kollam district is all set to implement the United Nation's call to observe 2014 as International Family Farming Year, raising the slogan of self-sustainability in food production. The panchayat has two villages, Adinad and K.S. Puram and as many as 12,230 families in 23 wards. The agricultural office of the panchayat had identified the fact that extensive cultivation alone...

-The Financial Express To cushion the blow of a delayed monsoon that has hit kharif sowing hard, the agriculture ministry has asked farmers to prepare their land and nurseries for direct sowing of Paddy (sans re-planting of saplings) and suggested cultivation of less water-consuming crops such as arhar, urad, pigeon pea, groundnut, maize and soyabean. The National Agromet Advisory Services, a joint initiatives by India Meteorological Department (IMD) and ministry of agriculture,...

-Down to Earth   It was early June. Jaspal Ram of Lehra Turkot in district Bathinda of Punjab was busy in his field putting gunny bags filled with mud on a plank of wood trailing his tractor. After sometime, he adds another row of gunny bags to add weight. On being asked what he was doing, Jaspal replies, "I'm levelling my field. A lot of water is lost if the Paddy fields...

-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...

-Deccan Chronicle Thrissur (Kerala): Planting Paddy on large swathes in expectation of copious rains and abundant harvests during Thiruvathira Njattuvela, according to conventional wisdom, between June 21 and July 4, has been a practice in Kerala. But try telling this to GenNext and you will draw a blank. The story is that the Zamorin of Malabar once remarked: "Aliens may take away our spices and other valuable crops but they cannot...