-VillageSquare.in Farmer producer companies have started to play an important role in procurement from smallholders, which guards against price crashes that has been plaguing marginalized farmers across the country despite record harvests The agricultural seasons of 2016-17 (Kharif and Rabi) have not been favorable for farmers across the country. In spite of the near-normal monsoon rainfall in India in 2016 coupled with record farm production, wholesale and retail prices for agricultural commodities...

-The Hindu GST will subsume almost all cesses levied at the moment One of the key sticking points thwarting consensus in the Goods and Services Council over the course of its meetings in 2016 was the compensation the Centre would have to pay States for any losses they might incur due to the implementation of the new indirect tax regime. What was the issue? The GST is a destination-based tax, and as such is...

-BusinessWorld.in There simply are no easy solutions to the crisis in Indian agriculture, a product of decades of neglect and poor policies It is quite macabre, really — the barely concealed glee that seems to course through liberal analysts and intellectuals whenever it looks like Prime Minister Narendra Modi is heading for trouble. Macabre, because as the latest series of protests and events centred around farmers show, it is as ghoulish as...

-The Indian Express First, it was demonetisation and crop price crash; now it is the collapse of cooperative credit that is hurting farmers during peak kharif operations. For most Maharashtra farmers, drying up of institutional finance for kharif farming operations is what’s really hurting. Nashik (Maharashtra): Last kharif, the Nashik District Central Cooperative Bank (NDCCB) disbursed  Rs 1,608.55 crore of crop loans during April-June, exceeding its target of Rs 1,257.18 crore. This...

-The Indian Express Punjab’s unique cattle breeding-cum-milk sale dairying model is under threat from gau rakshak activism and the Centre’s new animal trading rules. Randhawa and Gill are amongst Punjab’s many dairy farmers who have made the state into a major supplier of not just milk, but also milch animals. Gurdaspur (Punjab): “When there’s no land in our name, how would we now buy or sell cattle? Are they saying we...