-The Hindu Business Line Kochi: A training-cum-awareness workshop on Consortium of e-Resources in Agriculture (CeRA) called for promoting ICT-driven technology and information dissemination systems to improve agricultural research in the country. Keeping pace with the current knowledge diffusion trends, the new-generation researchers should come forward to utilise the digital knowledge resources maintained by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), the workshop proposed. The workshop was held at the Central Marine Fisheries Research...

-IANS New Delhi: If the farmers of Punjab and Haryana were to adopt smart techniques and use appropriate machinery, say experts, they won’t hog the headlines every winter for the wrong reasons — causing smog in the national capital because of stubble-burning. The Borlaug Institute of South Asia (BISA), a non-profit set up in 2011 to harness the latest technology in agriculture to improve farm productivity, has claimed to have reduced the...

-IndiaSpend.com So far, only a few states such as Karnataka and Tamil Nadu had made available millets and that too only in certain pockets. The union government proposes to include coarse grains such as jowar (sorghum), bajra (pearl millet) and ragi (finger millet) in the mid-day meal programme in schools and also distribute it through the government subsidised food programme, the public distribution system (PDS), agriculture secretary SK Patnaik said recently. This announcement...

-Press Information Bureau/ Ministry of Finance The Union Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs Shri Arun Jaitley said that there is a need to conserve water, incentivize agro processing and promote balanced use of fertilizers in order to ensure higher agriculture productivity. The Finance Minister said that in order to achieve the goal of doubling the farmer’s income by 2022, there is need for better storage and marketing facilities for the...

-Down to Earth Death of cotton farmers due to pesticide poisoning in the Vidarbha region raises vital questions about the government's attitude towards regulation of toxic pesticides One more evil has reared its ugly head in Maharashtra’s arid Vidarbha region, which has so far been infamous for farmer suicides. Some 35 farmers in the region have died of pesticide poisoning in last four months. Most of them were working in cotton and...