-The New Indian Express PALAKKAD: To strengthen the capacity of women and increasing their livelihood opportunities, tribal women in Attappadi are encouraged to undertake cultivation of traditional crops   through the Neighbourhood Groups (NHG) of the Kudumbashree. A total of 506 exclusive tribal women NHGs have been constituted in Attappadi and seeds will be distributed to them before the monsoon sets in. This is being done under the Mahila Kisan Shashakthikarna Pariyojana (MKSP)...

-The Indian Express As the toll of human misery and suicide mounts, official estimates of farm losses due to unseasonal rains and hailstorms in March remain controversial, with hasty downward revision. Since these estimates are largely notional, without validation from field visits, such revision smacks of deliberate fiddling. On March 24, the agriculture ministry reported that crops on 18 million hectares — about 30 per cent of the rabi crops —...

-The Hindu Given the high investment and negative incentives such as input subsidies, small farmers have not benefited from government schemes. Everything about the suicide of the farmer from Dausa, Gajendra Singh, save the tragedy for his family, has been theatre — the very public venue, the occasion of a political rally, the politicians happily playing their populist cards, and the media’s focus on trivialities. The tragedy is being skilfully milked for...

-Business Today The father of India's green revolution, M.S. Swaminathan, is involved in the conservation and cultivation of millet. He tells Business Today why millet is important. Q. Why did millet vanish from our fields? Swaminathan: In the past, in agriculture, a wide range of food crops were grown. Gradually, with market-oriented agriculture, the food basket shrunk, not only in India, but all over the world. As wheat, rice, corn, soyabean, potato became...

-Hindustan Times Some global meteorological agencies have pointed to the rising risks of an El Nino weather pattern this year which can trigger a poor monsoon in India, potentially posing an immediate challenge for the Narendra Modi government. El Nino, literally “little boy” in Spanish, is a climate phenomenon marked by higher sea-surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific. Its effects vary, from storms in California to drought in Australia and India. ...