Prelim Bits 05-02-2017

Northwest Africa 7635

• It is a meteorite discovered in Algeria, Africa in 2012.
• It has given insight into volcanic activity on Mars.
• The largest Volcano in the solar system, Olympus Mons, is found on Mars.
• But by analysing the chemical composition NA7635, scientists learnt that Mars had a single volcano that continuously erupted for 2 billion years.
• Martian volcanoes can grow to such enormous proportions because unlike Earth, Mars doesn’t have plate tectonics that constantly shuffle the surface.
• So the magma for the volcano in Mars gets hot magma from its interiors for billions of years continuously.

Model Contract Farming law

• Contract Farming involves production of selected crops by farmers under a buy back agreement with an agency engaged in trading or processing.
• At present, the model APMC act has a provision to allow contract farming and includes one or more commodities and only limited to marketing.
• The proposed model contract farming law in this year budget could cover all the agricultural commodities and cover farming right from distribution of seeds to marketing of final produce.
• The new model law will subsume contract farming from the purview of APMC act to ensure that APMC will not become arbitrators on contract farming.

e-Gov Awards

• The award is instituted by the computer society of India (CSI) and Nihilent Technologies.
• It helps recognize the efforts of eGovernance practitioners from across central and state departments and projects in district administration units.
• This year, Rajasthan and Telangana won the award under the state category and the award of Recognition went to Odisha and Nagaland.