-The Hindu Business Line Given the analytical output, it will become easier for governments to take decisions Global country risks, weather uncertainty, crop failure, lack of hedging instruments, increased capital costs, lack of insurance mechanisms and logistical bottlenecks are just a few of the issues that lead to volatility in prices of agricultural commodities. This volatility, combined with a steady increase in demand for food around the world, has forced us to accept...

-The Hindu Business Line   Technology is transforming Indian agriculture and increasing output. This is good news, given that India may need to produce 90 million tonnes of foodgrain annually by 2030 to feed its growing population, says Vishwanath Kulkarni Jitendra, a prosperous farmer from Machrauli in Haryana, had barely hired a combine to harvest wheat on his 10-acre plot when clouds started building up. The weather office had predicted rains over the...

-Reuters   The extra irrigated area would cut India's dependence on annual monsoon rains that water crops grown on nearly half of the country's farmlands New Delhi: India plans to expand its farmland under irrigation by at least a tenth in the next three years, potentially boosting grains output by an equal proportion in the world's second-biggest rice and wheat producer, a top government official told Reuters. The extra irrigated area would cut India's...

-Bloomberg   Actual rainfall may be five per cent more or less than the prediction The monsoon in India, which provides about 70 per cent of annual rainfall, will be normal this year amid forecasts for the emergence of an El Niño that previously caused droughts, government officials said. Rain could be 96 per cent of a 50-year average of 89 cm (35 inches) in the June-September period, said two officials with direct knowledge...

-The Hindu The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has given its starkest warning of the likely impact of climate change. The IPCC's March 31 report, the most comprehensive yet, states that the evidence of global warming is now overwhelming, and warns that all countries and all social classes of people will be affected by changes which are likely to be "severe, pervasive and irreversible." All animal species...