The good news is that no one's going to starve in India. The bad news is that this might be a temporary situation. With over a billion people, the world's second most populus nation needs to do a better job of managing its water resources to avoid future catastrophes.

There's a drought this year. There have been droughts before. And none of the five droughts since 1947, the year India claimed its independence from Great Britain, caused wide spread famine. And with bumper crops in 2007 and 2008, there is enough stored wheat and rice to serious food grain price inflation, according to an article in The Economist by reporters Andhra Pradesh and Lubana Teku. But there's no long-term comfort in those facts. Monsoon rains begin in June in much of the sub-continent and continue into September. But the country can get as much as half its annual rainfall in a 15-day period. This year's rainfall was down by more than 20 percent, which is causing droughty conditions in many agricultural regions.

In their article, Pradesh and Teku cite experts who say the country needs to anticipate more doughts because of global climate change. There also needs to be a national effort to store water and to get it to the right place at the right time to do the best possible good.

What the article doesn't say is that India's water problem could be a bellwether for the rest of the world.

You can read the full article here http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=478044&story_id=14401149

There's a shock in store for Pennsylvania farmers when rate caps go off their electricity costs in 2010. PennAg Industries Association is working to establish a buying pool for poultry farmers that could knock dollars off the generation portion of their electric bill. It's a complicated program. Staff writer Chris Torres did a story about PennAg's program in the current issue of Lancaster Farming.

I want to know where he pins his fishing license.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2931446/fishing_dog