-The Indian Express The Indian Express travels down the meat value chain in Uttar Pradesh to find a seamless system that’s now under strain. FOR Puran Chand Sharma, dealing with Mohammad Sabir Qureshi is a twice or maybe thrice-a-year affair. But this transactional relationship is essential to sustaining his dairy farm operation involving 10 female buffaloes — three now in-milk, two pregnant animals, two young yet-to-calve heifers, and three one-year-old calves. “The ones...

-The Indian Express According to the agriculture ministry’s second advance estimates of crop production for this year, total foodgrain output will surpass the previous all-time-high of 2013-14. India’s production of foodgrains and oilseeds is expected to hit record levels in 2016-17 on the back of a normal southwest monsoon and a decent winter, which would more than offset the impact, if any, of demonetisation. According to the agriculture ministry’s second advance estimates of...

-The Times of India HARIDWAR: A fine of Rs 11 lakh has been imposed on Yoga guru Ramdev's company, Patanjali Ayurved Ltd, by a city court on charges of misbranding and misrepresentation of its products. In its order, the court of Lalit Narain Mishra, Haridwar's additional district magistrate, found the company, which is currently eyeing at doubling its revenues from the current Rs 5,000 crore to almost Rs 10,000 crore by the...

-The Indian Express The opposition’s main contention is that the GM mustard hybrid incorporates three alien genes — barnase, barstar and bar — rendering it inherently unsafe for human and animal health. Fifty years ago, Union Minister for Food and Agriculture Chidambaram Subramaniam took the decision to import 18,000 tonnes of seeds of Lerma Rojo 64A and Sonora 64 wheat from Mexico. The seeds arrived just in time for their planting in...

-The Indian Express In a scenario of depressed crop prices, a unique PPP model in milk shows the way out. Coimbatore: For roughly a decade from 2004-05 to 2013-14, Indian farmers experienced rising incomes from higher crop prices year after year — something they pretty much took for granted. That party ended with the crash in global commodity prices, hitting agricultural exports hard and translating into lower farm-gate realisations for most crops. But...