-The Hindu 80 per cent subsidy will be granted for farmers: Villupuram Collector Villupuram (Tamil Nadu): Villupuram farmers are being encouraged to put up solar-powered pumping system to maximise farm production and to economise usage of water, according to V. Sampath, District Collector. Those farmers who would opt for such a system, being promoted under the National Agricultural Development Programme (NADP), would be eligible to get 80 per cent subsidy, to the extent...

-Deccan Herald The National Crime Records Bureau's data for 2013 is out, and farm suicides are pegged at 11,772 -- not very different from the earlier years.Many activists point out how these figures are in fact under-reported. In a country where the cultivators' numbers are plummeting drastically as the Census 2011 data shows, this unabated trend of farm suicides is something that any government should take note of. The central aspect to this...

-The Business Standard Easing of APMC regime, farmer-consumer contact, other proposals seen as positives To ease supply-side constraints on food articles, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has proposed several measures to help improve marketing and storage of produce. Taking cues from the Bhartiya Janata Party's election manifesto, he has proposed integrating markets across the country, with the Centre to work closely with states to reorient the latter's respective Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Acts,...

-The Business Standard     They were unimpressed by the UPA's misguided socialism, but they worry about the new regime's free-market orientation too Consider this paradox. The Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was decimated in the elections in spite of several years of good monsoon and rising agricultural production. Consider another paradox. This was the regime that implemented policies that were presumed to be pro-farmer: the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the...

-Down to Earth Demand farm income commission; urge political parties to make it an election issue A number of farmers' organisations got together on Thursday to demand a minimum living income equivalent to that of agricultural scientists for all farm households in the country and asked political parties to make it a part of their poll manifesto. Citing NSSO findings, they said the average monthly income of farm households in the country...