-The Times of India COIMBATORE: The Indian Rice Research Institute, Hyderabad, has awarded a farmer from Dharapuram for adopting drip irrigation system in rice cultivation, thereby reducing water consumption by 60%. Parthasarathy M, 69, received the Innovative Rice Farmer Award on August 29. In all, 30 farmers from sixteen states were nominated for this award. Parthasarathy bagged the award for largescale adoption of drip irrigation for rice cultivation in Amaravathy sub-basin in Tamil...

-Business Standard Mobile commerce venture AgroStar supplies seeds and fertiliser to farmers. As the company expands, delivery will be a challenge Navinbhai Karsanbhai Patel, a farmer from Navanagar in Gujarat, used to have a hard time securing quality inputs for his four-acre farm. That was before he got to know about AgroStar's offerings. His association with the company, now 18 months old, has resulted in 300 missed calls to the helpline number...

-The Indian Express The Centre needs to wake up. Otherwise India may return to the shortages of the mid-1960s. The cumulative rain deficit in the current monsoon season stood at (-)12 per cent of the long period average (LPA) as on August 27. If the deficit continues at this level till the end of September, the IMD’s forecast would be coming true. Technically, like last year, this would also be a drought...

-The Hindu Despite growing clamour for pesticide-free produce, doubts persist about the capability of organic farming to generate high yields Kerala: Organic farming began finding momentum in Kerala since the unveiling of a policy in 2010 that set the goal of converting the entire agricultural production in the State to organic within 10 years. That policy announced by the then Left Democratic Front government is now being fast-tracked by the present United...

-Al Jazeera Prime Minister Narendra Modi is unlikely to narrow the gap between Indian elites and the rest of the population India has experienced a significant economic growth spurt in recent decades. After seeing annual growth of 3 percent in the years after independence in 1947, the rate began to double, reaching a rate of around 6 percent per year after 1980. However, the distribution of growth proceeds has been very uneven...