-The Indian Express The idea of a Minimum Support Price for crops came first from a visiting US soil scientist and fertiliser expert The institution of ‘mandis’ is as old as markets where wholesale trading in primary produce has been taking place since time immemorial. APMCs or Agricultural Produce Market Committees are of more recent vintage and the creation of Sir Chhotu Ram. In 1939, the legendary farmer leader, as Development Minister in...

-Down to Earth Farmers across the globe are quitting their business, while the rural youth population is increasing. Who will grow our food? In 2019, the world started talking about a structural crisis impacting the planet’s most critical job —food production. The world’s food demand is rising but the number of people quitting, or not joining, farming is consistently growing. This raises an existential question: who will produce the food? In 2016, the...

-The Indian Express More and better-distributed rainfall this year is likely to result in higher sowing, higher production, productivity and profitability for the agriculture sector. While it is clear that India’s broader economy will contract this year, it is also true that well-distributed rainfall has meant that the agriculture sector per se may be quite productive this year. A new report by Crisil throws light on the prospects of the farm sector. Here’s...

-Scroll.in The trend is also linked to recent locust outbreaks, as large quantities of vegetation provide food for locust swarms. Ravindranath lives in the heart of the Thar desert in India. He and his family are agropastoralists – people who grow crops and rear livestock – in the village of Kalu in Bikaner district, Rajasthan. But the dry grasslands that people like Ravindranath have depended on for centuries for pasture are slowly being...

-Counterview.net The Covid-19 crisis has highlighted the risks of an unhealthy diet and the extreme fragility of food systems. The economic reconstruction that will follow the pandemic is the perfect opportunity to provide better nutrition and health to all. The pandemic should spur us to redefine how we feed ourselves, and agricultural research can play a vital role in making our food systems more sustainable and resilient. Family-owned farms still produce some...