-The Indian Express We have turned our back to the intense food and drinking water distress across states India has transformed spectacularly in innumerable ways in the last two decades. One of the least noted changes is in the way the country — governments, the press and people — respond to drought and food scarcities. Back in the late-1980s, many states across India were reeling under back-to-back droughts for three consecutive years, not...

-The Times of India New Delhi: In a sign of the strength of India's public research institutions, Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) released seven new varieties of field Crops including wheat, rice, chickpea, pigeon pea and mustard and identified 11 varieties of high-yielding agricultural and horticultural produce during 2015. All these varieties are not just resilient to several biotic (living organism like pests and insects) and abiotic (nonliving factors like light, temperature...

-The Times of India It's 8:00 am on a Sunday and outside Denzong Cinema in Gangtok's Lal Bazar, the otherwise languid atmosphere is punctured by grocers of two kinds. On one side of the cinema are those who sell vegetables, fruits and spices sourced from outside Sikkim, mostly from Siliguri, 115 km south in West Bengal. On the other side of the cinema, almost completing a triangle, are farmers from the...

-Business Standard The state demands that the insurance scheme should cover the produce lying in market yards, waiting to be bought by agencies Chandigarh: The Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, hailed as one of the most farmer-friendly crop insurance schemes of independent India, has run into rough weather in Punjab. The state is at loggerheads with the Centre over the efficacy of the crop insurance scheme. "The new scheme provides an indemnity level...

-Business Standard But RBI data suggest that by replacing interest subsidy with crop insurance, government can use about Rs 12,500 cr to facilitate crop insurance scheme If a recent recommendation of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on crop loan subsidy is approved by the government, agricultural loans are set to become as costly as home loans or car loans. RBI has suggested interest subvention on crop loans should be phased out,...