-Down to Earth Japan's Sapporo brewery patents Indian barley gene without giving benefit to farmers Ballia district, the easternmost part of Uttar Pradesh, is a flood-prone area that extends towards Bihar from the confluence of the Ganga and the Ghaghra. Over decades, its farmers, mostly marginal and small, have been cultivating barley, exchanging its seeds, improving the varieties and giving these to a government project to cull the best of the lot....

-The Indian Express Renowned agricultural scientist and vice-chancellor of Punjab Agricultural University, Baldev Singh Dhillon wants farmers in other parts of the country Renowned agricultural scientist and vice-chancellor of Punjab Agricultural University, Baldev Singh Dhillon wants farmers in other parts of the country to learn from Punjab and Haryana experience and judiciously use groundwater and fertiliser, to avoid problems faced by these two states today. Dhillon spoke to Sandip Das on the...

-The Hindustan Times Chandigarh: Agriculture in Punjab would witness an adverse effect due to the climate change in future. Predicting a steep rise in the average temperature during the coming decades, an agriculture expert said it would adversely affect the wheat and paddy crops. Prof PK Aggarwal from International Water Management Institute said the average rise in temperature during the past 100 years was 0.75 degree Celsius, which would be 1.5 to...

-The Business Standard The economic logic - and political reasons - behind the giant shift of spending power to the states Interim Budgets are not supposed to do this. This is precisely what they are not supposed to do. They are not supposed to lay out a policy change so vast it disempowers the next central government. But that's what P Chidambaram has done - and it appears to have been...

-The Hindu     Interest subvention retained, rice storage exempt from service tax Lauding the "stellar performance" of the agriculture sector, Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Monday announced a farm growth of 4.6 per cent in the current year, up from 3.1 per cent achieved during UPA-I. He said the government set an agriculture credit target of Rs. 8 lakh crore for 2014-15, against Rs.7.35 lakh crore expected this year. The interest subvention scheme for...