-The Business Standard About 20% of area under crop damaged by recent cyclone in Araku valley Bangalore: Cyclone Hudhud, which left a trail of destruction in coastal Andhra Pradesh, has left its mark on coffee plantations in the Araku valley in Andhra Pradesh and parts of Odisha as well. The upcoming organic coffee plantations in the valley have been devastated. According to Coffee Board, about 20 per cent of the bean-bearing plants have...

-The Hindu Ignoring hunger and malnutrition will have significant costs to any country's development. Nutrition improvement has both intrinsic and instrumental value One of the disappointments in the post-reform period in India has been the slow progress in the reduction of malnutrition, especially with reference to the underweight among children. In fact, the rate of change in the percentage of underweight children has been negligible in the period 1998-99 to 2005-06; the...

-The Hindu Hyderabad (Telengana): Poonam Malakondaiah, Principal Secretary, Agriculture, Telangana government, has suggested developing 100 model villages in Telangana to promote integrated farming to help small and marginalised farmers. Addressing the World Food Day celebrations at Prof. Jaya Shankar Agricultural University here on Thursday, she said that integrated farming would help farmers to take up dairy farming, fisheries, sericulture and other allied activities along with regular farming to boost their earnings. She suggested...

-The Times of India Haridwar: The journey of a thousand miles, they say, starts with a single step. Rahul Kumar should know. The 29-year-old took the first step, quit his job in a pesticide firm and returned to his roots with a desire to do something for his village. Today, Kumar's wish has come true. With the innovative farming practices that he ushered in at his village Liberhedi near Haridwar, life...

-Outlook In addition to amending the Rules of the Forest Rights Act, greater attention needs to be paid to changing the Land Acquisition Act   There is no explicit provision in the Forest Rights Act, 2006 for obtaining permission of the Gram Sabha for diversion of forest lands to non-forest purposes. However, Section 4(5) of the Act prevents government to evict any forest dweller unless the recognition process as provided in the...