Eucalyptus, Cocoa Production, Farm Subsidies

• The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has retained its outlook of an ‘above normal’ monsoon this year.
• Quantitatively, the southwest monsoon seasonal rainfall over the country as a whole is likely to be 106% of the long-period average (LPA) with a model error of ± 4%.

The monsoon ‘core zone’, which encompasses most of central India and is critical for the Kharif crop, and southern India is expected to see ‘above normal’ rainfall.

• Cyclone Remal had given a push to the eastern branch of the approaching monsoon system.  It is uncertain if the monsoon would begin in Eastern India before Kerala —an extremely unusual, but not unprecedented phenomenon.
• India’s strong monsoon rainfall is predicated on El Niño conditions withering away to ‘neutral’ conditions and the onset of La Niña conditions during the later part of the monsoon season.
• At present, neutral Indian Ocean Dipole [IOD] conditions are prevailing over the Indian Ocean. The latest forecasts from many global climate models indicate positive IOD conditions are likely to develop during the monsoon season.
• El Nino, La Nina and IOD conditions refer to temperatures in the Central Pacific, and the eastern and western halves of the Indian Ocean respectively.

La Nina conditions coupled with a favourable IOD spell good rains for India.

Dig Deeper: Read about other factors that influence the Indian Monsoon.

• Caterpillars unlike most land-based animals can sense electric fields around them with small bristles called setae on their bodies a feat called electroreception, as per findings published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
• They studied four species of caterpillars: cinnabar moth, scarce vapourer moth, European peacock butterfly, and common wasp.
• Researchers have long known that aquatic and amphibious animals use electroreception to detect both predators and prey.
• Scientists have also found electroreception in arthropods like bumblebees, hoverflies, and spiders. Caterpillars, which are also arthropods.
• However, none of these land-based creatures use the ability to defend against predators.
• As an insect’s wings flap through the air, static charges build up on them. When it nears the caterpillar, the setae sense these charges by building up charges of its own.
• These animals have had a lot of evolutionary pressure upon them to evolve defences because so many animals like to eat them.

Dig Deeper: Read about anti-predator adaptation mechanisms like camouflage among various prays developed through evolution.

• The Kerala government issued an order allowing the Kerala Forest Development Corporation (KFDC)to plant eucalyptus trees for its financial sustenance in 2024-2025.
• The KFDC was established in 1975 as a dynamic production forestry enterprise that has 7,000 hectares (ha) of plantations.

The plantation includes the following species: Eucalyptus grandis, Acacia auriculiformis, Acacia mangium, Acacia crassicarpa, Acacia pycnantha (wattle), Alnus nepalensis, Casuarina equisetifolia and Pinus patula.

• Eucalyptus plantations have a rotation age of nine years. At the end of each cycle, plantations approved by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change are felled.
• Kerala State Forest Protective Staff Organisation study found replacing exotic plants in forested areas with the corresponding natural species could help ensure food for wild elephants at Chinnakanal in Munnar which is filled with eucalyptus trees.
• Marayoor Sandal Division in Idukki, 108 hectares of exotic species were removed to allow natural grasses to flourish. The result was water streams in the area were restored after a 30-year gap.

Dig Deeper: Why Eucalyptus is considered harmful to the native ecosystem?

Colour is a type of information our eyes receive and process based on electromagnetic radiation.

• An object has a colour based on which frequencies of visible-light radiation it absorbs, reflects, and/or scatters.
• In the human eye, the rod and the cone cells receive information in the light that strikes the eye: the rod cells record brightness while the cone cells record the wavelengths, which the human brain interprets as colour.
• Human beings have three types of cone cells. Each type is sensitive to light of a different wavelength, and they work together to input colour information to the brain.
• The possession of three types of cone cells is why humans are called trichromats.
• Many birds and reptiles, on the other hand, are tetrachromats (four types of cone cells).
• Similarly, while human vision is restricted to wavelengths from 400 nm to 700 nm, honeybees can ‘see’ ultraviolet light and mosquitoes and some beetles can access information in some wavelengths of infrared radiation.
• Properties of colour-
• In 2002, a Technical committee of the International Commission on Illumination specified the definition of hue to be the degree to which a given (perceived) colour can be said to be similar to or different from perceived red, orange, yellow, green, blue or violet.
• Brightness is related to an object’s luminance. The luminance is the power emitted by a source of light per unit area, weighted by wavelength; the eye’s subjective perception of this power in some direction is inferred as the source’s brightness.
• Lightness refers to the extent to which a coloured object appears light compared to a white-coloured object that is well-lit.
• The chromaticity, or chromatic intensity, has to do with the human perception of colour and depends on the colour’s quality irrespective of how well it is lit.

Dig Deeper: Which space telescopes are used by India or the World to observe celestial wonders hidden in radio waves, X-rays, gamma rays and ultraviolet light?

• India’s farm input subsidies, including sops for fertilizers, electricity and irrigation, have increased by a sharp 50% to $48.13 billion in 2022-23 from $32.07 billion in the previous fiscal, as per notifications of the country at the WTO.
• The EU, the U.K. and the U.S. raised concerns and called for greater transparency at a recent peer group review meeting of the WTO.
• Recently, The Cairns Group also claimed that India’s public stockholding (PSH) program is heavily subsidized.
• New Delhi explained the input subsidies are mainly for power, irrigation and fertilizers, and the increase was due to inflation and rising costs of fertilizers.
• Input subsidies are part of the Amber box subsidies that distort international trade. WTO limits these subsidies by capping it at 5% for developed countries and 10% for developing countries.
• Agricultural input subsidies, targeted towards low-income and resource-poor farmers, are exempt from limits on domestic subsidies under the carve-out of special and differential treatment measures offered to developing nations under WTO rules.
• As India has declared that 99.43% of farm holdings in the country are of low-income or resource-poor farmers (per the Agricultural Census for 2015-16), its input subsidies are excluded from capping.
• There is more peer group scrutiny on input subsidies also because it is not capped and can be increased without limits.

Dig Deeper: Read about the Classification of subsidies under WTO like Green and Blue along with Amber Box. What is Cairns group?

• The world’s undisputed cocoa powerhouses accounting for over 60% of global supply, Ghana and its West African neighbour Ivory Coast are facing catastrophic harvests.
• Major African cocoa plants in Ivory Coast and Ghana have stopped or cut processing because they cannot afford to buy beans.
• A combination of rampant illegal gold mining, climate change, sector mismanagement and rapidly spreading disease are to blame for declining Cocoa production.

Dig Deeper: Map the African countries whose economies are substantially dependent on single agricultural products or natural resources