-The Indian Express Booming Indian antelope populations threaten crops in many areas. Farmers are reluctant to strike against them, so the herds have only feral packs to fear. A couple of centuries ago, some four million blackbuck roamed the Indian landmass south of the Himalayas from undivided “Punjab to Nepal and probably in most parts of the Peninsula where the country is wooded and hilly, but not in dense jungle”. At...

-Hindustan Times Lip service: Amarinder Singh sought votes on the promise of a waiver, but now faces heat as more than half the state’s farmers have been left out of the scheme. Bathinda: The weather-beaten face of Rajpal Singh shows signs of anxiety as he stands in one corner of his eight-acre farmland in Punjab’s Bathinda, surveying the standing wheat crop that is almost ready for harvest. Singh might get a reasonable price...

-Hindustan Times The agriculture ministry has started a new programme to focus on millets or coarse cereal production, mostly grown by small and poor farmers New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government has decided to include millets in the public distribution system for which it is procuring these grains at federally fixed minimum support prices, agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh said. The agriculture ministry has started a new programme to focus on millets or...

-Hindkisan.com Farmers allege that the company had not taken possession of the land they sold two decades ago and demanded the company to initiate new acquisition proceedings as per provision of Land Acquisition Act, 2013. The Act prescribes that an agency or entity has to initiate fresh proceedings to acquire a plot if the agency did not take the possession of the land for more than five years. Tear gas shells fired,...

-The Indian Express Schemes to ensure that farmers get fair returns will come a croppper unless trade and tariffs are synced with minimum support prices. With farm prices of several commodities falling way below their minimum support prices (MSPs) in 2016-17 and 2017-18, farmers have been under increasing stress. The Centre and several state governments are searching for ways and means to support farmers. In his recent address (Mann ki Baat), the...