-The Financial Express Despite the delayed monsoon and slow progress in sowing, the government on Monday set a 30 million tonne (mt) rice procurement target for the 2014-15 kharif marketing season, starting October. Despite the delayed monsoon and slow progress in sowing, the government on Monday set a 30 million tonne (mt) rice procurement target for the 2014-15 kharif marketing season, starting October. This is a moderate revision from the previous year's kharif...

-The Business Standard States need to create alternative marketing structures for farm produce since middlemen also provide vital services that are otherwise unavailable to the farmer   One of the issues often raised in the context of high food inflation is the pressing need to change the Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMC), the marketing boards established by state governments. The earlier United Progressive Alliance government had asked the Congress-ruled states to remove fruit...

-The Hindu The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) on Friday gave the green signal for field trials of genetically modified (GM) rice, mustard, cotton, chickpea and brinjal at its meeting in Delhi. Hem Kumar Pande, chairperson of the GEAC told The Hindu that meetings were not held for a year since March 2013 and there was a backlog of 70 applications pending since 2011-12 of which 60 have been cleared so far. Friday's...

-The Business Standard The programme would be extended to include all identified villages in 13 districts in the state in a phased manner starting with the Rabi crop season this year Hyderabad: International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (Icrisat), in partnership with the government of Andhra Pradesh, would cover six million hectares in the state under the dry land farming programme Bhoochetana. The programme would be extended to include all...

-The Hindu Business Line Below normal rainfall will result in agricultural production declining India, predominantly an agriculture-based economy, is largely dependent on the monsoon. The agriculture sector is the backbone of the Indian economy and thus, monsoon should be considered as the backbone of agriculture. The four-month South-West monsoon season, accounts for nearly 75 per cent of the country's total rainfall and plays a crucial rule as about 55-60 per cent of...