In this year's budget, Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has essentially tried to consolidate the gains from the initiatives he had launched during the previous two budgets. Thus, in agriculture there is no new initiative except increasing the target for agricultural credit to Rs.5,75,000 crore during 2012-13. This represents an increase of over Rs.1,00,000 crore from last year. The interest rate of four per cent recommended by the National Commission...

-IANS Farmers of Assam, that recently boasted of having a record rice harvest, are losing interest in paddy cultivation, saying they were facing financial ruin in the absence a minimum support price and adequate procurement centres for their produce. rice production is going down as the Food Corporation of India (FCI) has not fixed the price to buy back the farmers’ produce, say farmers’ representatives. And there are only 20 FCI procurement...

A report on ‘State of Indian Agriculture 2011-12’, tabled in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday, has called for reforms to ensure that the sector grows in tandem with the overall GDP of the country. The report says that “achieving an 8-9% rate of growth in the overall GDP may not deliver much in terms of poverty reduction unless agricultural growth accelerates”. Admitting that the sector has undergone ‘significant structural changes’ in...

-IANS Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's dream of India's second green revolution taking off from Bihar seems to be coming closer to reality. A young farmer of Darveshpura village in his native Nalanda district has set what is claimed to be a world record in potato production through organic farming.  Three months ago, a group of farmers in the same village had created a "world record" producing 224 quintals of paddy per hectare...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh can be devastatingly polite: when Bharatiya Janata Party president Nitin Gadkari, who has a commercial interest in agriculture, wrote him a doomsday letter on the dire state of agriculture under UPA rule, Dr. Singh took a month to reply, but when he did, it was to tell the BJP president in excruciating detail about the rise in agricultural production during his tenure in office, which compares...