-The Indian Express This is the first time in the decade-long history of the rural livelihood generation scheme that the ministry has released a performance outcome of assets. Marking a shift of focus under the MGNREGA from mere job generation to asset creation, the Ministry of Rural Development has released a report on creation of irrigation potential for more than 46.57 lakh hectares, and individual assets for 33 lakh people under...

-The Times of India New Delhi: Veteran journalist P Sainath has made a strong demand for declaring Agriculture a public service. He also believes there needs to be a special session of Parliament to discuss the farmer crisis and the decade-old report of National Commission of Farmers chaired by professor M S Swaminathan. The author of Everybody Loves A Good Drought delivered the inaugural lecture of a monthly lecture series planned by...

-The New Indian Express If a government survey report is to be believed, an agricultural household harvests a debt of Rs 3,000 every month, forget about making money to sustain itself. The agricultural household 70th round survey of National Sample Survey Office conducted during July 2012 and June 2013 has revealed that the total income of an agricultural household per month was just Rs 6,426. On the other hand, the total...

-The Times of India Most of us know exotic new veggies and grains like kale and quinoa are "imported" but even ordinary staples like potato, onion, tomato and chilli came from elsewhere, reports Subodh Varma. A study of 177 countries by scientists from the International Center of Tropical Agriculture has found that in India, more than a third of all food items derived from plants -grains, vegetables, fruits, spices, oils, sugar etc....

-Scroll.in Farmers in Maharashtra say almost all the seeds supplied by one company contracted a disease. A failure of tomato seeds might have contributed to the current rise in tomato prices across Maharashtra, if not the rest of the country. Since April, tomato prices have more than doubled across India. While the conventional wisdom has attributed this to excessive heat and unseasonal rain that affected the tomato crop at its flowering stage, farmers...