-The Indian Express Price deficiency payment schemes in Madhya Pradesh and Haryana do not cover farmers’ losses. Telangana’s input support scheme deserves nation-wide emulation. Farm distress is likely to be one of the major focal points of the upcoming Union Budget. Agri-GDP growth has fallen to around 2 per cent per annum in the first four years of the Modi government; the real incomes of farmers have fallen as well. The growth...

-The Indian Express The crisis in the crop’s prices in two of the four years of the Modi government illustrate that farmers no longer matter to it. Farmers are habitually great raconteurs. My grandfather would often narrate an episode, when he encountered a farmer sitting by a heap of potatoes in the middle of the night. On investigating what compelled the farmer to guard potatoes when there were no buyers, he was...

-The Indian Express Dairy farmers in Gujarat, till recently, were relatively insulated from the crisis faced by those growing cotton, groundnut or potatoes. Rajkot/ New Delhi: AFTER COTTON and groundnut, it’s milk that is turning sour for Gujarat’s farmers. A crash in global skimmed milk powder (SMP) rates, coupled with surging procurement by dairy unions affiliated to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), has led to an unprecedented glut. In the last...

-Down to Earth The average agricultural growth has reached its lowest in the last four years to 1.9 per cent While presenting Union Budget 2017-18, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley gave much emphasis on farmers. He even announced an increased budget outlay for agriculture, which made media houses declare it as a budget for rural India. Soon, the dust settled down and reality came to the surface. The budget was increased by...

-The Indian Express Behind dumping of potatoes, including outside Assembly, a bumper crop and insufficient storage space. Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh, the largest potato producing state with about 35% of the country’s total output, has had a bumper crop in 2016-17 — over 155 lakh tonnes — with the result that potatoes are rotting along roadsides and outside cold storage units. What threw the spotlight on the surplus — apparently more than the government...