Agricultural production in India has increased through green renaissance, growing high-yielding varieties of crops and adopting scientifically improved soil fertility management, water management, plant protection and crop husbandry technologies during the past three decades.
Integrated approach

GUWAHATI: Farmers across India have been making claims for crop losses under the central government’s National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (NAIS).

However, the farmers in the northeastern states, mainly in Assam, are not even aware any such scheme exists, said an expert.
K.M. Buzarbaruah, vice chancellor of the Jorhat-based Assam Agricultural University, told IANS no claims at all have been made by the farmers of Assam and other northeastern states last year for their crop losses.

CHENNAI: Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa on Saturday announced a comprehensive special package worth `790.18 crore for farmers in Cuddalore and Villupuram districts, the worst affected in Cyclone Thane. While `65.22 crore has been allotted for agricultural crops, `724.96 crore will be givenfor horticultural crops.

JAMMU: Highlighting the State's rich bio-diversity and uniqueness of being land of rich fauna and flora, Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah on Friday emphasized the need for protection and preservation of this individuality of Jammu and Kashmir.

Chairing the 2nd meeting of State Board for Wildlife (SBW), the Chief Minister, who is also its Chairman, said that measures should be in place to minimize wild animal-human conflict.

Plans are afoot to include fodder under the scheme

Food security has been a long-pending demand of the people. To increase productivity, the National Food Security Mission (NFSM) has been established said, R.S. Malik, National Consultant (Agriculture Extension) of the NFSM, while visiting various fields in Ottapidaram block here on Tuesday. He interacted with the farmers and saw the benefits being availed from various government schemes.

More intense heat waves due to global warming could diminish wheat crop yields around the world through premature ageing, according to a study published recently in Nature Climate Change.

Current projections based on computer models underestimate the extent to which hotter weather in the future will accelerate this process, the researchers warned.

The facility will develop and test new hybrid seed varieties, says MD

Monsanto India’s Managing Director Amitabh Jaipuria at the launch of breeding centre in Chikkaballapur on Monday. With a tinge of frustration and anger, Monsanto India’s Managing Director Amitabh Jaipuria clarified that the breeding station inaugurated in Chikkaballapur on Monday will not violate the Bio Diversity Act and will be a non-biotech centre.

Madhya Pradesh accounts for nearly 40 per cent of the total area under certified organic farming in the country. Though most of it is due to cotton fields, the state has an immense potential to bring even food crops under organic cultivation.

What may help the state’s cause is that agriculture is already organic by default in many tribal-dominated districts because farmers either don't have the resources to use chemical fertilizers or lack access to them.

The government is carrying out the National Agriculture Census (NAC), reaching out at the community level for the first time to study the overall scenario of the agriculture sector in the country. Besides collecting data on major areas of agriculture like production of major crops and livestock under Crop and Livestock Survey (CLS), the census will cover new areas including land utilisation, socio-economic condition, society formation, available facilities for farmers and development programmes being operated in the community level.

Inter-cropping with sugarcane has been found as more beneficial to the farmers as it can boost total crop production per unit area along with ensuring sustainable sugarcane cultivation with higher economic benefit compared to other crops.
Quoting the field-level research findings and views of farmers, the sugarcane researchers and agriculturists revealed this while talking to the news agency in Rajshahi on Sunday.