-The Hindu Lower surplus, higher prices could help reduce arrears to farmers in poll bound U.P. and Punjab Unseasonal rains in Uttar Pradesh and a higher diversion to ethanol production are likely to result in a drop in sugar production this year, according to industry estimates. With average retail sugar prices also on the rise, a reduction in surplus sugar could help speed up cane payments by mills and reduce their pending...

-Down to Earth The demand for pulses by 2030 will be 32.64 million tonnes There is no verified report that the country’s farmers are ceasing pulse cultivation. The production of pulses has increased through the years, from 8-15 million tonnes till 2006-07 to 16 million tonnes in 2015-16, 23.13 million tonnes in 2016-17, 25.23 million tonnes in 2017-18 and eventually, 25.58 million tonnes in 2020-21, due to the concerted efforts of research...

-The Hindu Environment Minister Gopal Rai said the solution has been given free of cost to farmers who will spray it in over 4,000 acres The Delhi government, in a move to provide an alternative to stubble burning and combat air pollution, will on Monday start its campaign to use bio-decomposer solution on farmlands under its winter action plan. Environment Minister Gopal Rai said the solution has been given free of cost to...

The newly released Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households and Land and Livestock Holdings of Households in Rural India (NSS 77th Round) establishes the fact that the farm households are more and more relying on wage incomes instead of 'net incomes from crop cultivation' for their livelihoods. In Marxian lexicon, proletarisation (a term that we can loosely use for depeasantisation) refers to the process in which the farmers/ tillers are...

-Down to Earth Sri Lanka has found itself in an economic crisis in pursuit of producing 100% organic food   ‘Lankan food crisis shows perils of organic farming’. This was the headline of a column by Indian economist Swaminathan Anklesaria Aiyar column published in a national daily recently. Aiyar’s article analysed the Sri Lankan food crisis, which has been triggered by the President’s recent decision to shift from chemical to organic farming. While the...