-Down to Earth Japan's Sapporo brewery patents Indian barley gene without giving benefit to farmers Ballia district, the easternmost part of Uttar Pradesh, is a flood-prone area that extends towards Bihar from the confluence of the Ganga and the Ghaghra. Over decades, its farmers, mostly marginal and small, have been cultivating barley, exchanging its seeds, improving the varieties and giving these to a government project to cull the best of the lot....

-The Hindu With the era of cheap, bountiful water having been replaced by increasing supply-and-quality constraints, many international investors are beginning to view water as the new oil There is a popular, tongue-in-cheek saying in America - attributed to the writer Mark Twain, who lived through the early phase of the California Water Wars - that "whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over." It highlights the consequences, even if...

-The Hindustan Times Chandigarh: Agriculture in Punjab would witness an adverse effect due to the climate change in future. Predicting a steep rise in the average temperature during the coming decades, an agriculture expert said it would adversely affect the wheat and paddy crops. Prof PK Aggarwal from International Water Management Institute said the average rise in temperature during the past 100 years was 0.75 degree Celsius, which would be 1.5 to...

-PTI The previous record of 259.32 million tonnes was achieved in the 2011-12 crop year (July-June) India's farm sector is at its best today, with the country set to produce a record 263.2 million tonnes of foodgrains in the current crop year, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said. Pawar also said he is "the happiest agriculture minister in the world" to see this "stupendous performance" in the sector and the ability of...

-The World Bank WASHINGTON: Aquaculture - or fish farming - will provide close to two thirds of global food fish consumption by 2030 as catches from wild capture fisheries level off and demand from an emerging global middle class, especially in China, substantially increases. These are among the key findings of "Fish to 2030: Prospects for Fisheries and Aquaculture" - a collaboration between the World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization of the...