-The Telegraph As Prime Minister Narendra Modi prepares to mark his fourth anniversary in power, V. Kumara Swamy takes stock of how hollow his promises to farmers have been. Will there be a price to pay? Hemant Patidar, a farmer, has been camping at the Mandsaur mandi in Madhya Pradesh with 15 quintals of “good quality” garlic for more than a week now. The price has been on a downslide for the...

-Financial Express Among the six states studied by Icrier, Gujarat spends the most on agriculture R&E (0.59%), followed by Bihar (0.50%), Punjab (0.41%), Odisha (0.25%), Uttar Pradesh (0.17%) and Madhya Pradesh (0.24%). The government’s expenditure on agricultural research and extension education services is not only very low but also heavily skewed in favour of crops, even as the dairy sector has a rapidly increasing share in the gross value of output...

-Livemint.com Rainfall will be 97% of the 50-year average with a 54% probability that rains will be normal to above normal, IMD said in its first stage, long-range monsoon forecast New Delhi: Rainfall is likely to be normal during the June-to-September southwest monsoon season, the government’s weather office said on Monday. “For the third consecutive year, India will have a normal monsoon. There is very less probability of experiencing a deficit monsoon. We...

-Groundxero.in India’s forests are officially on sale. Forests, which are ecological and cultural constructs intrinsically linked with human communities that have been living in and using those for ages, have turned into mere repositories of ‘products’ such as timber and ‘ecosystem services’ that could be quantified, valued, priced and exchanged—or so the Draft National Forest Policy prepared by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change(MoEF & CC) would have us...

-Livemint.com The current National Forest Policy dates back to 1988 before India’s economic liberalization started and now the government wants a revision, as it perceives a decline in corporate investments into the forest sector New Delhi: Imagine two scenarios. One is a natural forest, nature’s complex multi-layered ecosystem and a landscaped home to 80% of all terrestrial biodiversity where thousands of species of plants, animals and microorganisms interact and thrive. The second...