-Down to Earth The report-Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability-says erratic and extreme weather, like severe droughts, floods and heat waves will affect food production across the world Growing food could become harder which could lead to a food crisis says the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The apex body on climate change science released its report on March 31, 2014 in Yokohama Japan. It paints...

-The Guardian Rice conservationist Debal Deb grapples with 'mindless Indian elite' to reintroduce genetically diverse, drought-tolerant varieties   Fifty years ago, every Indian village would probably have grown a dozen or more rice varieties that grew nowhere else. Passed down from generation to generation and family to family, there would have been a local variety for every soil and taste - rice that would grow well in droughts or deep floods, which had...

-The Business Standard Inflation has cooled in recent months but the next monsoon holds the key. With fear of an El Niño effect impacting it, academicians and policy makers are worried about the possible impact on farm output and food inflation. Prabhu Pingali, director of the Tata-Cornell Agriculture and Nutrition Initiative at Cornell University and former director of the agricultural and development economics division of the Food and Agriculture Organization,...

As the challenge of global warming looms large, the importance of climate resilient agriculture (CRA) gets recognized by both scientific and farming communities. Countries like India are expected to be intensely affected by climate change since majority of the population is primarily dependent on agriculture for livelihood. CRA, encompassing adaptation and mitigation strategies and the effective use of biodiversity at all levels-genes, species and ecosystems-should, therefore, be India's response towards...

-SunStar.com FARMERS, particularly those growing rice, can help reduce methane emissions into the atmosphere by adopting controlled irrigation or alternate wetting and drying (AWD) technology. Developed by the Laguna-based International Rice Research Institute (Irri), AWD is a technology that allowed rice fields to dry for a certain period before applying irrigation water. Also called controlled irrigation or intermittent irrigation, AWD technology can actually save farmers almost one-third of irrigation water without sacrificing yields....