-The Times of India MUMBAI: Farmer suicides in Maharashtra are intensifying with as many as 1,088 cases reported in 2015 by the end of May. This is almost twice the figure reported just two months ago. Between January and March, the state government had reported 601 cases. The suicide rate had already begun climbing steeply with the onset of the drought last year which destroyed large swathes of crops. The unseasonal rain...

-The Telegraph Nagpur: Maharashtra's BJP-led government has put on hold confined field trials for genetically modified (GM) crops "until all doubts are cleared", following "objections from reputed members of society" including RSS affiliate Swadeshi Jagran Manch. No time bar has been specified for the restrictions, which come days before the onset of the monsoon and the start of the sowing season. The state agriculture department wrote to private and public sector companies on...

-The Financial Express The Narendra Modi government has pledged to employ all machinery at its disposal to deal with a second straight year of deficient monsoon. The Narendra Modi government has pledged to employ all machinery at its disposal to deal with a second straight year of deficient monsoon and denied an impending distress in the vulnerable pockets of the country, but a dispassionate look at the ground situation would show there...

-Outlook Pulses are falling off the poor man’s plate. Price rise may hit the middle class next. Pulses—all-important as a source of protein—are set to be spoilers this year in the government’s endeavour to keep a check on food inflation. Already, over the last nine months, the prices of some pulses have jumped 64 per cent in major cities. This is because of below-normal monsoon last year, compounded by untimely rain and...

-DNA Govt gears up to ring-fence farmers, prices from poor rains India's farm sector shrank for the first time in five years in the year ended March 31, Union agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh said on Wednesday, a day after the government forecast a likely drought this year that could hit output again. The Met office cut this year's monsoon forecast on an El Nino weather pattern that has raised fears of...