-Livemint.com/ HowIndiaLives.com Even as it presses for market reforms in agriculture, the Centre has been actively using the basket of schemes wholly funded by it to widen the social security net for farmers. Expect that to continue in the coming Budget In 2016, the BJP-led government set itself the target to double farmers’ incomes by 2022. An inter-ministerial committee set up to recommend strategies to meet this target highlighted seven sources of...

-Financial Express According to Rao, the ICAR committee went through more than 1,400 scientific journals on various methods of promotion of sustainable agriculture besides interacting with farmers who have claimed to have adopted ZBNF across seven states. Large scale adoption of Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF)  — farm practices which exclude all synthetic chemical inputs and promote use of on-farm biomass — would result in ‘tremendous reduction’ in production of agricultural crops...

-Down to Earth Eligibility threshold for FPOs should be reduced or support provided to meet the criteria, experts feel Farmer producer organisations (FPO) figure prominently in government policies and the ambitious plan to double farmers’ income by 2022. But funds remain elusive for these bodies, according to a recent analysis.  Just 1-5 per cent of FPOs have received funding under central government schemes introduced to promote them in the last seven years, the...

Recent media reports point out that the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh is likely to get about Rs. 6,300 crore projects ahead of the upcoming Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, including a Rs. 400 crore worth plant for the propulsion system of anti-tank guided missiles in Jhansi. The foundation was laid for the first project in the Jhansi node (related to the Uttar Pradesh Defence Industrial Corridor) on November 18, 2021. The two...

-The Hindu Business Line There is no guarantee farmers’ income will rise as the methodology for estimating cost of production is outdated, defective Although the farmers’ agitation that lasted over one year was finally called-off, their demand for a law guaranteeing minimum support prices (MSP) for crops is continuing. Can the MSP be legalised in a country that produces about 1,000 million tonnes of agri-commodities? If so, who will benefit from it?...