-Livemint.com With shrinking farm sizes and lack of accurate land records, farmers find it difficult to generate enough income to provide for their households From farm subsidies to farm loan waivers, the Indian government spends crores on farmer welfare, but these efforts will be inadequate unless they can tackle an increasingly daunting barrier: lack of land. The provisional figures from the latest agriculture census reveals how land—the most critical input for agriculture—is...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: India has informed the World Trade Organization (WTO) that its proposed national agriculture export policy would be consistent with global trade rules. In a meeting held last week to review farm policies of various countries, India’s proposed policy drew attention owing to concerns over its potential impact on global markets. The policy aims to do away with restrictions such as minimum export prices or outright bans as...

-Livemint.com Loan waivers and electricity subsidies are band-aids at best; a deeper transformation is needed The past few days have neatly summed up the scale and nature of the challenges facing India’s agriculture sector. First, the provisional agriculture census 2015-16 showed that landholdings have continued their decades-long trend of fragmentation, leading to a further rise in the proportion of small and marginal farmers. Then, 30,000 farmers, who had started their march from...

-Financial Express While recently releasing the book, Supporting Indian Farms the Smart Way by Ashok Gulati, Marco Ferroni and Yuan Zhou, Arun Jaitley remarked that India needs a good blend of investments and subsidies in its agriculture policy. He said that, luckily, there are no severe constraints on resources to invest in rural areas, be it roads, water (irrigation), sanitation, and even housing. If he could include in this list of...

-Livemint.com While farmers will receive a 12% penal interest payment for delays in settling claims, state governments will be penalised if they delay in depositing their share of subsidies New Delhi: Faced with a sharp decline in the number of farmers signing up for its flagship crop insurance scheme, the centre on Tuesday imposed a 12% penalty on insurance companies for delayed settlement of claims. Under the new guidelines that will take effect...