-The Financial Express With Delhi and its adjoining areas receiving moderate to heavy pre-monsoon showers and the southwest winds active over Chhattisgarh, Odisha, West Bengal and Jharkhand, the planting of key kharif crops, such as paddy, pulses, oilseeds, sugarcane and cotton, is set to get a boost. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Sunday said monsoon was expected to hit northern states over the next few days. “The conditions are favourable for...

-ABP Live Some days back the death of Surjit Singh, who had met Rahul Gandhi a few days before he committed suicide, once again brought the focus on the tragic but unresolved issue of farmer suicides. A few days after Surjit Singh consumed sulphos tablets, another 36-year-old farmer, Baljinder Das Bairagi from Sangrur, hanged himself from a ceiling fan. He carried an outstanding loan of Rs 7-lakh. A survey done by three...

-Business Standard Labour shortage and threat of deficient monsoon are pushing adoption of farm machinery Taraori: Vikas Chaudhary, a farmer in Haryana's Karnal district, started using a maize planter in 2012. The acquisition of a happy seeder around the same time helped him sow wheat directly.  The two machines helped him reduce input costs substantially. "With the help of machines, I have managed to reduce the input cost for paddy by Rs 2,000...

-The Hindu Vijayawada: As agricultural production in Andhra Pradesh is being increasingly impacted by adverse weather, farmers are searching for ways to mitigate the loss. Lost in desperation, they are not realising that there is a widely available tree which enriches the soil fertility multifold with little human intervention and negligible investments. Commonly known as ‘fencing plant’, it is known for many generations but the farming community has almost forgotten it under...

-The Telegraph Mayong (Morigaon): It was just some weeks ago that Jogeswar Bangthai, Ganesh Saikia and Mohammad Anar Ali were dreaming of a bumper crop as they gazed at their fields that had turned golden with the ripe paddy waiting to be harvested. A few days more and their granaries would brim over. Or so they thought. Then came the rain that refused to go away. In this fabled land of black magic, farmers...