-Business Standard Integrates climate change concerns and promotes private investment and role in foRestry The NDA government has made public its draft National FoRest Policy to replace the one that was crafted in 1988. Incorporating consequences of climate change but entirely ignoring one of the three foRest related laws, the FoRest Rights Act, the policy brings new focus to plantations, growing trees outside the foRest lands  and wood industry. While the policy continues...

-The Hindu Once slotted as vermin, these animals are "open season" and could become easy game for hunters as well as traders in meat. Since 2015, the Union Environment Ministry has acceded to requests from Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, and Bihar to declare wild boar, rhesus macaque, and nilgai as vermin within specified territories of these States, and outside foRests and protected areas. This reprieve means that those who kill these animals here...

-The Indian Express After Delhi, it is Maharashtra’s turn to attempt liberating fruits & vegetables from APMC shackles. Pune/ Vashi: Spread over 70 hectares land off the Old Mumbai-Pune highway, it’s a place where more than Rs 10,000 crore worth of fruits, vegetables and other farm produce gets traded annually. But right now, it’s also the scene of a prabodhan, a mass awakening campaign by traders and commission agents that could gather...

-The Indian Express The Maharashtra Gramin Bank has written to the district collectors of eight districts expressing inability to disburse crop loans for the upcoming kharif season. Mumbai: The prediction of a good monsoon may not be enough to bring cheers to farmers of Marathwada, as questions are being raised over disbursement of crop loans in the region. The Maharashtra Gramin Bank has written to the district collectors of eight districts...

-The Indian Express According to a survey conducted by the Registrar General of India, Punjab is a vegetarian state and Telengana has the highest population of non-vegetarians in the country. A recently-released survey conducted by the Registrar General of India (RGI) in 2014 busts so many myths about the vegetarian and non-vegetarian divide in the country. A big surprise lies in the fact that the land of butter chicken is predominantly vegetarian. There...