-The Indian Express Raising procurement prices of kharif crops will only give false hope to farmers. Has the winter of farmers’ discontent turned into a glorious summer by the significant hike in minimum support price (MSP) for kharif crops announced two weeks ago? The hike is unlikely to stem the rural unrest that is gnawing into the ruling alliance’s votebank. The PM has had to personally defend the government’s programmes that have...

-Livemint.com Agriculture is not only crucial for what happens to growth, inflation and rural distress, it is also politically important given the simmering discontent among farmers in the last two years Last week, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) declared that the south-west monsoon has covered the entire country, 15 days earlier than normal. This may be a cause for celebration considering the distress in agriculture in the last four years. Agriculture is...

-The Hindu Farmers have been staging protests as domestic prices are falling on the back of a glut last year and an expected good harvest following a good monsoon New Delhi: The Union government has allotted quotas for import of pulses and is enforcing an additional import agreement with Mozambique at a time when domestic stocks are at their highest, domestic production is expected to be high and prices are crashing. Farmers...

-The Indian Express Government godowns are, for the first time, bursting at the seams with pulses on record procurement Pune: When in mid-December, Anand Pawar decided to register the standing tur (pigeon-pea) on 10 out of his 50-acre holding with the Maharashtra State Cooperative Marketing Federation’s purchase centre at Latur, he was quite hopeful of realising the government’s minimum support price (MSP) of Rs 5,450 per quintal for the soon-to-be-harvested crop. At...

-The Indian Express India’s pulses production increased by nearly half in the space of two years, from 16-17 million tonnes to 23-24 million tonnes this year New Delhi: Till recently, there were two agri-commodities in which India was seen as being perpetually and increasingly import-dependent: edible oils and pulses. Between 2010-11 and 2016-17, the import value of the former soared from $4.72 billion to $10.89 billion, while from $2.25 billion to $4.24...