Hyderabad: The flood fury descended on Krishna and Guntur districts of Andhra Pradesh by Sunday night with as many as 300 villages going under the water. Officials involved in relief work believe as many as 10 lakh people are affected by the disaster.
It was one of the worst disasters in the taluka, as torrential rains reduced paddy/sugarcane crop to naught, while highway and internal traffic remained affected and rainwater kept a number of houses inundated throughout the day, as rains provided no respite to the residents.
The prices of food crops like wheat, rice and maize will rise between 121 per cent and 194 per cent by 2050 due to climate change, according to a study.
This, coupled with decreased yields of these crops, will threaten food security of some 1.6 billion people in South Asia and render 25 million more children malnourished by 2050.
According to the vice-chancellor of Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences Dr Harbans Singh, early sowing during the Rabi season in dryland areas would result in higher yields. He has suggested that sowing should be done with the receding monsoons and winter rain should fall on the standing crop.
A federal judge has ruled that the government failed to adequately assess the environmental impacts of genetically engineered sugar beets before approving the crop for cultivation in the United States. The decision could lead to a ban on the planting of the beets, which have been widely adopted by farmers.
A senator from the U.S. Corn Belt filed an amendment on Tuesday that would bar federal regulators from considering how land is used overseas when they write rules to expand use of biofuels.
It was an experiment that was supposed to let farmers have it both ways. Unable to wean them away from paddy, the Punjab government banned early transplantation of the crop last year to arrest the dwindling groundwater level. The move, which coincided with a good monsoon, succeeded in this purpose and even resulted in a rise in the level in some districts.
NREGS is on the way to becoming the most lucrative corruption racket ever made for politicians-------
Even I, who expected nothing good out of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, find its review by Anil Sharma of National Council of Applied Economic Research depressing. Let me relate how my pessimistic predictions have been exceeded.
