-The Indian Express It is important to evaluate the consequences of the Centre’s agriculture policy. With elections around the corner, it’s too late for a course correction of the farm sector, but it’s an opportune time to document the unintended consequences of half-baked policies for the next five years. Otherwise, the momentum of existing policies will continue to feed rural economic misery. Agriculture GDP growth plummeted just as India’s agricultural trade surplus,...

-The Hindu M.P., Gujarat likely to opt for new payment scheme Despite patchy rainfall in some parts, the Agriculture Ministry has set a foodgrain production target of 285.2 million tonnes for 2018-19, a marginal increase from the previous year’s harvest of 284.8 million tonnes. Rainfall deficit during the current monsoon season is now at 10%, according to the Indian Meteorological Department. “Some areas got extra rainfall, some areas were deficient. But in spite of...

-The Hindu The government must stop storing millions of tonnes of foodgrains in the open under tarpaulins In India, the height of the rainy season is a time that one prays will pass — flooded roads, wet clothes, masses of insects and mould. No place is safe from the growth of fungi that spring up overnight. With the humidity in the air and the warmth of summer, all that fungi need is...

-Firstpost.com Farmers across India are sceptical about the promised benefits of the minimum support price (MSP) promised by the government for their kharif crop. In a press release, the government announced that the MSP would be set at 50 percent over the cost of production and vowed to double farmers’ incomes by 2022. As Amrinder Singh Punia, a farmer and general secretary of the Punjab Agricultural University Kisan Club, points out, “Government...

-TheStatesman.com Vijay Jardhari, who started the ‘Beej Bachao Andolan’ Uttarakhand in 1986 along with fellow farmers, has dedicated his life to conserving traditional seeds, which otherwise would have disappeared due to wide acceptability of hybrid seeds among farmers Dehradun: Flashback 1986: Whenever farmer and social activist Vijay Jardhari and his friends would visit any village telling locals to conserve their traditional seeds and to continue consuming millets, people would make fun of...