-Livemint.com An advance review of drought preparedness will help mitigate the impact of any sub-par rains on farmers, says agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh New Delhi: Despite the government’s weather office forecasting a normal south-west monsoon in 2017, agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh on Monday wrote to all state chief minister’s asking them to be ready with contingency plans in case of poor rains. An advance review of drought preparedness will help mitigate...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The India Meteorological Department (IMD), country's national weather forecaster, on Tuesday predicted normal monsoon rainfall for the year, sending a positive signal to the farm sector and the overall economy. "Even the distribution of the rainfall is expected to be good this year," said IMD chief KJ Ramesh, sounding quite optimistic about the prospect of having a good year for the country's agriculture. Good spatial distribution...

For the fifth year in a row, horticulture production is expected to surpass foodgrain production. However, as compared to the crop years 2014-15 and 2015-16, when drought was faced by most Indian states, horticulture production this year is predicted to rise by a meagre amount.   As compared to 2014-15 and 2015-16, horticulture production this year is expected to rise by 2.2 percent and 0.4 percent, respectively. However, as compared to...

After facing intense criticisms from various sections of the society following its policy of demonetisation during November-December, 2016, the NDA government has finally something solid to cheer about. Riding on the back of a normal monsoon, gross foodgrain production is likely to reach a record level of about 272.0 million tonnes in the crop year 2016-17. As per the second advance estimates of foodgrain production, which has been released by...

As opposed to what has been said officially about the positive impact of demonetisation on rabi sowing, acreage actually declined in 2016-17 as compared to a normal year. Let us see why this has been so. On New Year’s Eve, Prime Minister Narendra Modi while addressing the nation post-demonetisation, among other things, said: “...Friends in the last few weeks, an impression was sought to be created that the agriculture sector...