In compliance of one of the recommendation/suggestion of the Evaluation Report of Pilot WBCIS, a Committee has been constituted to draft the guidelines for setting up Automatic Waether Stations (AWSs) and Automatic Rain Gauge (ARGs) & their accreditation, standardization, validation and quality management of weather data. The Committee has submitted draft report covering following aspects:

• AWS equipment standards
• AWS installation standards & maintenance standards and
• Guidelines for 3rd party accreditation and data certification services.

Click here for Circular & Draft Guidelines.

Bringing the green revolution to eastern India has been a remarkable success. Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal have substantially increased their contribution to rice production. Therefore, support the Eastern Indian States has been extended with an allocation of 1000 crore in 2013-14.

The original Green Revolution States face the problem of stagnating yields and over-exploitation of water resources. The answer lies in crop diversification. Hence, in the recent Union Budget, a sum of 500 crore has been provided to start a programme of crop diversification that would promote technological innovation and encourage farmers to choose crop alternatives.

Farmer Producer Organizations (FPO), including Farmer Producer Companies (FPC), have emerged as aggregators of farm produce and link farmers directly to markets. To signal our support to them, the Government has decided to provide matching equity grants to registered FPOs upto a maximum of 10 lakh per FPO to enable them to leverage working capital from financial institutions. A sum of ₨ 50 crore has been earmarked for this purpose. Besides this, a Credit Guarantee Fund will also be created in the Small Farmers’ Agri Business Corporation with an initial corpus of ₨ 100 crore.

To save domestic oilseed growers in view of enhanced import shipments due to slump in international prices, the Government has decided to impose a Duty @2.5% on crude Soyabean and Palm Oil.

First Semi Annual Medium Term Agricultural Outlook and Situation Analysis Report

• Quarter-1: End of June-2012
• Quarter-2: End of Sep - 2012
• Quarter-3: End of Dec 2012

A pilot programme on Nutri-Farms for introducing new crop varieties that are rich in micro-nutrients such as iron-rich bajra, protein-rich maize and zinc-rich wheat, is being launched. A sum of upto ₨ 200 crore has been earmarked to start the pilots. It is hoped that agri businesses and farmers will come together to start a sufficient number of pilots in the districts, most affected by malnutrition.

SSP - The SSP Powder has been retained in FCO upto 8th may 2014

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Mahalanobis National Crop Forecast Centre completed one year of operation on 23.04.2013. In order to commemorate this occasion and to take a stock of progress so far and plan of action, a function was organized on April 30, 2013 followed by a Workshop on Crop Forecasting and Drought Assessment. The function was followed by 10th meeting of NNRMS Standing Committee on Agriculture. Secretary (A&C) presided over the function and meeting. Special Secretary and Principal Advisor of DAC also attended the event along with senior scientists from Indian Space Research Organisation. Senior officers from State Agriculture Departments, State Remote Sensing Centres, IMD and ICAR were also present.

Click here for picture gallery    and   here for more details.

Third Advanced Estimates of Food-grain Production in India were released on February 8. As per this, total food-grain production in India during the crop-year 2012-13 is likely to be a little more than 255.36 million tonne. Corresponding figures for Rice and Wheat alone are likely to be 104.22 and 93.62 million tonne respectively.

Click here for crop-wise and year-wise details.

The issue of inclusion of various kinds of organic manure in the Fertiliser Control Order, 1985 was discussed in the 39th meeting of the Central Fertiliser Committee. The CFC constituted a technical group for formulation of general specification applicable to all kind of manure irrespective of their source and method of manufacturing. The technical committee recommended the following specifications

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The President of India, Pranab Mukherjee on 15 January 2013 presented the Krishi Karman Awards for the year 2011-2012 at an award ceremony at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. The awards were presented to the State Governments for their excellent performance in increasing the production of food grains in their respective states.

Awards in different segments:

Ten states namely Punjab, Uttarakhand, Assam, West Bengal, Tripura, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Himachal Pradesh were presented commendation awards. From the eight awards winning states, for the first time one male and one female farmer were also awarded for their outstanding performance.

The Agriculture Ministry bagged the Gold Medal in the India International Trade Fair, 2012 among the Government Departments. Before this, the Ministry won Chairman (ITPO)’s Award of Excellence in the year 2010 and put up an attractive crowd-pulling pavilion in the year 2011. The theme ‘Technology to the Tiller’ was depicted with attractive models and stalls ranging from micro-irrigation to reefer vans. Another highlight of the pavilion was engrossing and enthralling skit shows.

Click here for pictures of the Agriculture Pavilion.