-IndiaSpend.com Bengaluru: As India deals with growing numbers of COVID-19 cases and the economic ramifications of the resultant lockdowns, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government has made a slew of announcements and promulgated ordinances to revive the economy, including the agriculture sector. It brought in the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion & Facilitation) Ordinance 2020, Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Ordinance 2020, and amended the...

-The Hindu Food security and farmer welfare are intertwined It is ironic that it took a devastating pandemic to force the government’s hand for long-overdue agrarian reforms. Amendments have been made to the Essential Commodities Act, 1955. The Finance Minister has urged States to dismantle the Agricultural Produce Market Committees. Several long-term changes have been made to the agricultural sector, such as fair pricing and e-trading, along with liquidity measures. The Centre...

-TheWire.in Even though India has had a few relatively successful models, contract farming has failed to take off in a meaningful manner. Of the three agriculture-related ordinances promulgated on June 5, 2020, the most predictable was ‘The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Ordinance, 2020’. Put simply, it provides a legal basis to the existing practice of contract farming in India’s agriculture and allied sectors. In 2018, the Union...

-The Hindu Business Line In an effort to reintroduce the bill seeking amendments in the Agricultural Produce Marketing (Development and Regulation) Act, the Maharashtra government has started discussions with stakeholders, including farmers’ leaders, traders and mathadi workers (head loaders). In the first meeting recently conducted by State Revenue Minister Chandrakant Patil, farmers’ leaders and traders reached an agreement on scrapping cess on the produce brought and traded in Agriculture Produce Market Committee...

  In its 2014 election manifesto, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), among other things, promised to "take steps to enhance the profitability in agriculture, by ensuring a minimum of 50% profits over the cost of production". In his 2018-19 Union budget speech too, the Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley informed the Parliament that the 2014 election manifesto of the BJP had stated that the farmers should get at least 1.5 times the...