-Down to Earth Sivasankaran's land grabbing spree has threatened millions of livelihoods, says report Indian origin businessman Chinnakannan Sivasankaran has engaged in aggressive land grabbing of more than half a million hectares across Africa, Asia and South America, putting millions of livelihoods at risk. This was revealed in a detailed report released by Barcelona-based non-profit GRAIN on Tuesday. The report says Sivasankaran diverted 0.56 million hectares of food-producing land to production of palm...

-The Indian Express The four-month monsoon season ended last week leaving a deficit of 12 per cent. The authorities have called it a below-normal monsoon and the worst in the past five years, but skim the data and the picture seems even more sobering. Nearly one-third of the 36 met divisions in the country have received deficient rainfall, with Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh - which are major agriculture regions -...

-Live Mint It's been two years since the issue was flagged. However, there seem to be no clear answers New Delhi: On 14 August when the Union ministry of agriculture released the fourth advance estimate of crop production for 2013-14, it gave the country reason to cheer: in 2013-14 India had achieved a record food grain production of 264 million tonnes, beating the previous year's (2012-13) 257 million tonnes. These production figures,...

-The Economic Times Dinkar Patil, a farmer from Buldhana district in Vidarbha, Maharashtra, normally cultivates cotton on his 13-acre farm land. This year, however, he has skipped the cotton crop and opted for soyabean and tur dal. "The rainfall started late. I did not cultivate cotton because of the delayed rains and the huge increase in cost of cultivation of the crop," said Patil. He is expecting a fall of about...

-The Business Standard WTO reconvenes to re-examine issue of agriculture subsidies, numbers alone suggest that India has a strong case for declining to sign WTO's TFA The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is reconvening in the last week of September to examine the issue of agricultural subsidies against the backdrop of India's refusal to become a signatory to the trade facilitation agreement (TFA) at Bali. Since then, a lot of water has flowed...