-The Hindu Business Line This kharif, with its high pulses output, provides an opportunity to push procurement, processing — and lift curbs on exports Pulses have been in the news over the last one year and for all the wrong reasons. Sharply lower harvests two years in a row (2014-15 and 2015-16) due to a below-normal southwest monsoon in the kharif season and unseasonal rains during the rabi harvest combined with rising...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: India is readying a raft of far-reaching reforms in the neglected agriculture sector, often seen as a politically sensitive subject, by trying to pitch the Niti Aayog’s blueprint directly with the states. Liberal contract farming, direct purchase from farmers by private players, direct sale by farmers to consumers, single trader licence, single point levy of taxes and taking fruits and vegetables out of the mandi laws are...

-Business Standard Mumbai: Maharashtra will have to wait more for the proposed law to regulate prices of pulses. The Centre has sent back the state's draft Bill, questioning the very need of such a law when the Essential Commodities Act, 1955 already provides stringent provisions to curb hoarding and control prices. The Centre has also questioned why the provision for imprisonment, in case of violation, is lower than the Essential Commodities...

-Livemint.com Maharashtra’s farmer-to-consumer markets and APMC reforms are changing the state’s agriculture sector, long-burdened by economic and political pressures Mumbai: These days, Lata Arun Dimble is out at 8am in her farm in Khed Shivapur. Along with husband Arun and son Ajit, she picks brinjal, tomato, chilly, cucumber, spinach, radish, bitter gourd, cabbage, cauliflower, and green peas. By 11am, the vegetables are loaded onto a mini-truck her husband owns. It’s the same story...

-TheWire.in Each time a small farmer migrates to an urban area, it means one food producer less and one food consumer more. Rome: Now that world attention is focused on the fast growing process of urbanisation, with two in three people estimated to be living in towns and cities by the year 2030, an old “equation” jumps rapidly to mind: each time a small farmer migrates to an urban area, it equals...