-The Times of India CHANDIGARH: Burning of paddy and wheat stubble is not new phenomenon in Punjab, but its impact is being felt at an alarming levels as the area under cultivation has increased enormously over the decades. Study shows that the area under paddy cultivation in the state has increased by 39% in a little over past three decades and the land under wheat cultivation has gone up by 80%. Paddy...

-IndiaSpend.com So far, only a few states such as Karnataka and Tamil Nadu had made available millets and that too only in certain pockets. The union government proposes to include coarse grains such as jowar (sorghum), bajra (pearl millet) and ragi (finger millet) in the mid-day meal programme in schools and also distribute it through the government subsidised food programme, the public distribution system (PDS), agriculture secretary SK Patnaik said recently. This announcement...

-Down to Earth India needs to find a permanent solution to the problem of public stock holding, as it is a matter of survival for hundreds of millions people During the negotiations for WTO Agreement on Agriculture in 2001, India raised concerns over food security and flexibility that developing nations must have when it comes to providing subsidies to key farm inputs. Seventeen years have passed since then and countries like...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: With the Sri Lankan cricket team's dramatic protest against playing conditions highlighting the mounting embarrassment over Delhi's pollution, a PMO-headed panel met on Monday and reviewed the need for more accurate real-time monitoring of air quality and measures to control stubble burning. The monitoring of air quality and pollutants was considered necessary so that the sources of Delhi's bad air could be mapped and understood, and...

-The Hindu Business Line Procurement of the excess output vis-a-vis a normal year, rather than open-ended purchase, is a viable option A bountiful harvest that implies an increase in output may not always increase the nominal income of the farming sector, which is subject to the behaviour of input and more particularly output prices, which may sometimes move sharply. There can, therefore, be years in which there is a sudden and sharp...