India's oilseeds production dipped to 249.3 lakh tonnes in the crop year 2009-10, compared to 277.2 lakh tonnes in the previous year, Parliament was informed today. The country had produced 297.6 lakh tonnes of oilseeds in 2007-8, Minister of State for Agriculture K V Thomas said in a written reply in Lok Sabha. As a result of the fall in oilseeds production, the minister said, India has been facing shortage of edible...
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India Needs A Seed Liability Bill by Devinder Sharma
For past several weeks, thousands of farmers in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Rajasthan, Bihar and Jharkhand have been left in the lurch. They had planted urd and til crops in a large acreage, and to their dismay no grain formation took place in the standing crop. Unable to bear the economic loss, at least four farmers have reportedly committed suicide. Thousands of farmers have been pushed deeper into economic distress....
More »India Microcredit Faces Collapse From Defaults by Lydia Polgreen and Vikas Bajaj
India’s rapidly growing private microcredit industry faces imminent collapse as almost all borrowers in one of India’s largest states have stopped repaying their loans, egged on by politicians who accuse the industry of earning outsize profits on the backs of the poor. The crisis has been building for weeks, but has now reached a critical stage. Indian banks, which put up about 80 percent of the money that the companies...
More »Centre keen on cotton exports despite industry protests
Despite an outcry from the garment exporters , the government is keen on allowing excess cotton to be exported from the country before the US cotton hits the international market in January and brings prices down. The inter-ministerial committee on cotton will meet end of the month to look at fresh production figures and will take a call on whether the present export cap of 55 lakh should be lifted. “We just...
More »Obama Visit and Indian Agriculture: Profit Surge for American MNCs and Peril for Indian Farmers! by Vijoo Krishnan
A lot has been said and written about the visit of Barack Obama, the President of USA to India. The corporate media was in the usual over-enthusiastic drive to bring to its readers and viewers all minute details about his visit from where he stayed and what he ate to how many warships, planes and cars accompanied him and how a whopping $200 million was spent per day for the...
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