-Livemint.com In a year when Maharashtra’s agriculture sector recorded a growth of 12.5%, a look at why farmers in regions as distantly located as Nashik and Wardha are up in arms Ahmedabad/ Nashik/ Warda (Maharashtra): Rajendra Borgude, 42, is a prosperous farmer half of whose 50 acre-irrigated farmland goes under grape cultivation. He drives a Nissan Terrano and was able to get a crop loan of Rs12 lakh from Nashik District Central...

-The Economic Times blog Farmers, from Punjab in the north to Tamil Nadu in the south, have started agitations demanding farm loans be waived. The Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra governments have already considered it politically expedient to write them off. Some other states may follow the suit. However, such decisions are as misguided as they are misleading. Nonetheless, it will be a mistake to treat the agitations as a domino effect of...

-Livemint.com Behind the rising tide of farmers’ protests lie several structural weaknesses facing the farm economy In a year when farm growth has crossed the 4% mark and official statistics show a record increase in production, one would have expected farmers to celebrate. Instead, farmers in states such as Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra are out on the streets protesting, and in some cases, facing bullets from the local police. What explains this...

-Livemint.com Fiscal 2017 marks the fifth straight year when production of horticulture crop surpassed that of foodgrains New Delhi: Latest numbers from the agriculture ministry released on Tuesday showed that production of horticulture crops like fruits and vegetables touched a record high of 295 million tonnes in 2016-17. Apart from being higher than foodgrain production estimated at 273 million tonnes during this period—another record i.e. 2016-17 marks the fifth straight year when...

-PRS Legislative Research The key findings of the report entitled: State of Agriculture in India by Tanvi Deshpande (March, 2017) are as follows: * The agriculture sector employs nearly half of the workforce in the country.  However, it contributes to 17.5% of the GDP (at current prices in 2015-16). * Over the past few decades, the manufacturing and services sectors have increasingly contributed to the growth of the economy, while the agriculture sector’s...