-Down to Earth   Too high a premium for too little cover Maharashtra government appears to have learnt no lesson at all from the hailstorms that lashed the entire state in March this year, and yet again lashed several districts in May, if its new decision to include three orchard crops - orange, sweet lime and guava - in its Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme (WBCIS) on an experimental basis during the current...

-The Hindu Amidst worrisome indications that human-induced climate change is affecting the monsoon over India, research just published adds to a body of evidence showing that extremes in rainfall are increasing. "Our analyses indicate a shift in the recent period towards more intense wet spells and more frequent but less intense dry spells," say a team of researchers from Stanford University in the U.S. in a Nature Climate Change paper. The scientists examined...

-The Hindu     Aberrations in monsoon behaviour are not uncommon. What is new is the difficulty in forecasting caused by factors coming under the generic title, ‘Climate change.' Forecasts by the South Asian Climate Outlook Forum and the India Meteorological Department indicate that the south-west monsoon rainfall may be deficient. Also, there is a possibility of the evolution of an El Niño event during June to September. There is a 45 per cent...

-The Times of India   RAJKOT: Farmers in Saurashtra are a worried lot following the unseasonal showers that were received on Sunday and Monday. Major damage to the harvested crop of wheat, cotton, chilly and coriander has been reported from the agriculture produce committee markets (APMCs) across the region. The harvested crop lying in the open got spoilt by the rain and thunderstorm. The losses are estimated to be in crores. Even the...

-Outlook     Nagpur: The Maharashtra government has so far extended financial assistance to the tune of Rs 71.41 crore to farmers in Vidarbha region who were affected by excess rains recently. "The authorities received a total of Rs 100 crore, including Rs 80 crore on March 20 and Rs 20 crore on April 5, and have disbursed Rs 71.41 crore till today, to about 81,860 farmers affected by the heavy rainfall," official sources...