-Down to Earth Norman Uphoff, professor emeritus of government and international agriculture at Cornell University, US, likes to say that the system of rice intensification is a virus. He says he caught the virus in 1990 and that it took a full three years for the virus to set in. Uphoff, 73, is talking about SRI, the system of rice intensification, a bug that he caught in Madagascar from a French...

-The Hindu Increase productivity without compromising on ecology: Swaminathan Sangareddy (Andhra Pradesh): Renowned agriculture scientist M.S. Swaminathan opined that the proposed loan waiver for farmers in both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh should not be like a patronage and instead it should bring them out of the debt trap. Addressing a gathering and later the media at International Crops Research Institute for Semi- Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) at Patancheru on Monday after being named ICRISAT...

-The Business Standard The programme would be extended to include all identified villages in 13 districts in the state in a phased manner starting with the Rabi crop season this year Hyderabad: International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (Icrisat), in partnership with the government of Andhra Pradesh, would cover six million hectares in the state under the dry land farming programme Bhoochetana. The programme would be extended to include all...

-The Hindu   The urban future depends on making cities intelligent, and that applies equally to both new and old parts of the city Smart cities, the flagship project of the Bharatiya Janata Party's urban vision, have received a firm financial allocation in the Union budget. The government has provided Rs.7,060 crore to build 100 smart cities as satellite towns on the outskirts of large cities to accommodate the burgeoning urban population. Foreign...

-The Financial Express Global rice trade doesn't operate on market principles. Rather, it is guided by politics, vested interests and weather Rice is a political commodity. Governments all over the world maintain regimentation on rice production and trade through price controls and subsidisation, tariffs, phytosanitary and environmental safety standards-sometimes in a whimsical manner. On July 6, the United States International Trade Commission (USITC) notified investigations (to be completed by April 2015) on...