-The Hindu Agroforestry promotes productive cropping environments, prevents deforestation, protects watersheds and enables agricultural land to withstand extreme weather events Growing trees on farms is a triple-win strategy for combating simultaneously the challenges of increasing food production, mitigating greenhouse gases and adapting to climate change. It is an instrument of Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA), catapulted to centre-stage by President Obama's launch of the Global Alliance for CSA at the World Climate Summit on...

-The Times of India BATHINDA: Basmati brought to grain markets in Punjab will now contribute to the cause of cancer treatment as the government has imposed a cess of 0.25% on this variety of rice from this season. Punjab marketing board authorities expect to collect around Rs 19 crore from this decision depending on the arrival of basmati in the market. State agencies are hopeful of basmati yield reaching 35-36 lakh tonnes this...

-The Business Standard Make schemes mobile and portable, by focusing on people and not products India spends close to four per cent of its GDP on an alphabet soup of welfare schemes and subsidies - it has become a welfare state before becoming a developed state. Despite its significant costs, India's welfare system is neither comprehensive nor very effective - subject to huge leakages and corruption, and not well knit into...

-Press Information Bureau/ Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation The Government today announced an overarching scheme for uplift of urban and rural poor through enhancement of livelihood opportunities through skill development and other means. The scheme has been named as ‘Deen Dayal Antyodaya Yojana - DAY'. The announcement was made today by Shri M.Venkaiah Naidu, Minister of Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation and Shri Nitin Gadkari, Minister of Rural Development...

-Down to Earth Asia houses 526 million of the 805 million chronically undernourished people in the world The good news is that the world today is producing enough to support the projected population of nine billion people by 2050. But the bad news is that still 805 million people-or one in every nine people-are hungry in the world, says a new report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund...