-Down to Earth From providing agricultural information for specific countries to identifying trends in the sector, censuses serve a variety of purpose In the backdrop of a round of country-driven agricultural censuses which will begin in 2016 to gather information and statistics on the global agriculture sector, senior FAO statiscian Jairo Castano discusses with Down To Earth the importance of the exercise. * How helpful are agricultural censuses in gathering information and statistics...

-Reuters India's villages face a sharp spike in food prices in 2016, as a second year of drought drives up the cost of ingredients such as sugar and milk, and poor transport infrastructure stops falling global prices from reaching rural areas.  India's first back-to-back drought in three decades also complicates government spending calculations as Prime Minister Narendra Modi tries to prune a subsidy regime that has long propped up the rural economy,...

-Financial Express The country must double its support to farmers, from the current levels of about 6-8% of the value of agri-output It was in the mid-1980s that the ‘India-Bharat’ phraseology was fist pushed into political jargon, by farmers’ leader Sharad Joshi, with ‘India’ representing the urban elite of the country and ‘Bharat’ synonymous with its neglected rural folk. Joshi, at the time, was leading lakhs of farmers protesting against anti-farmer policies,...

-Hindustan Times Faridkot/Bathinda: Jagroop Singh owns seven acres of agricultural land in a village of Faridkot district. All of it was under the long-duration paddy (PUSA 44) harvested on October 17. He then had barely 10 days to prepare his field for wheat sowing. The seasoned cultivator did not think twice before putting a matchstick to his paddy crop residue littered all over his field. The stubble went up in flames within...

-The Hindu Business Line Policy interventions, skill development enhance opportunities for farmers Agriculture, the largest livelihood generating activity, is fast transforming itself from a supply-driven to a demand-demand scenario. The discerning consumer (urban, rural and global) is increasingly demanding better quality, multiple choices, food safety and convenience. Diversification is the key to convene these changing demand patterns with supply, and more importantly, to act as an overall risk mitigant for the producer himself....