-The Hindu Business Line While proposals on agri-warehousing and viability-gap funding are positive, MGNREGA cutbacks could have been avoided The Economic Survey had a full chapter on agriculture and food management issues, highlighting the role of agricultural GDP; Minimum Support Price (MSP) regime, mechanisation of agriculture, farm credit, crop insurance, agri research and education, including in allied sectors such as livestock and fisheries, food processing and agricultural trade, besides rationalisation of food...

-Newslaundry.com It’s a repository of public datasets on Indian agriculture and socioeconomic indicators and, going forward, on financial inclusion and rural development. Data, they say, is the new oil. It undergirds much of the modern economy and, increasingly, the polity. There’s hardly a socioeconomic sector that big data doesn’t drive today, from the cutting edge of scientific research and technology to the mundane chore of buying groceries. The sheer volume of...

-The Indian Express India’s premier farm research and education institute has a full-time director after nearly four years. It is an institution whose blockbuster varieties account for more than 95% of the country’s Rs 32,800-crore annual basmati rice export revenues, nearly half of its total wheat area, and a quarter of that sown under mustard. Yet, the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI, better known as Pusa Institute) has an annual research budget...

-Economic and Political Weekly In Tamil Nadu, the extreme variation in rainfall had reduced the availability of water to agriculture and caused the groundwater table to fall by 37%. The production of rice, an important crop, had became particularly precarious. A well-designed upscaling strategy boosted and sustained the production of rice; it also helped the build-up of organic matter and improved soil fertility. This experience shows that the System of Rice...

-The Indian Express Govt plans to change existing law to ensure availability of quality seeds to farmers. How will the proposed Bill to replace The Seeds Act, 1966 meet its objective of ‘regulating quality of seeds for sale, import, export’? The existing 1966 law already provides for regulation of the quality of seeds. What does the new Bill seek to change? The current Act only covers “notified kinds or varieties of seeds”. Thus,...