-Hindustan Times “It was a small swarm, and spread across 1km-by-1km,” Suwa Lal Jat, joint director of plant protection in Rajasthan’s agriculture department said on Monday. Jaipur: A new swarm of locusts entered Rajasthan’s Jaisalmer on Sunday, officials said Monday. This is the fifth swarm to enter the state in four days from its western border with Pakistan. Since the first locust swarm invaded the state’s Sriganganagar district from Pakistan’s Baluchistan on April...

In the midst of COVID-19 lockdown, desert locust swarms have been seen in parts of Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh in the second half of May 2020. The recent attacks by desert locust swarms have caused massive crop damage, depletion in the stock of cattle fodder and destruction of green vegetation in these states. As on 25th May, 2020, over half of Rajasthan’s 33 districts were...

-Society for Social and Economic Research Monograph 20/3 Key Messages Lack of planning and preparation by the Central government for tackling the COVID-19 pandemic has dealt a massive blow to India’s economy and has caused enormous hardships to working people of the country. Harvesting of Rabi crops • Unplanned and sudden imposition of the lockdown resulted in a massive and unprecedented disruption to agricultural activities such as harvesting, sale of agricultural produce, and purchase...

-Livemint.com * But the marginal increase is unlikely to cheer farmers hit by falling prices * The increase in MSP ensures that farmers will receive a price between 50% to 83% over their production costs, agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar says NEW DELHI: The central government on Monday announced minimum support prices (MSPs) of 14 kharif crops, planting for which will begin shortly with the progress of the annual monsoon. MSPs of major rain-fed...

-The Hindu Haryana professor writes to Union, State agriculture Ministers reharding issue Gurugram: Prof. Rajinder Chaudhary, Advisor, Kudarti Kheti Abhiyan, Haryana has expressed disappointment over the fact that despite the known side-effects of aerial spraying of pesticides, the government’s locust control policy was focussed only on chemical spray. He said they completly ignored non-chemical measures. In a letter to the agriculture Ministers and agriculture secretaries of the Centre and Haryana, Prof. Chaudhary said a...