-The Times of India   The government is set to accept the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council's recommendation to cover 75% rural and 50% urban population under a food security law, but wants to keep the percentages outside the language of the Act itself. UPA-2 is inclined to set the percentage of population covered in a notification or schedule accompanying the Act so that it can be revised by executive order...

Andhra farmers shun growing paddy this kharif in absence of buyers, storage space Achanta, a small village in Andhra Pradesh, hit the headlines in 1967 with a record rice yield in the kharif or monsoon crop season. It was the time of the Green Revolution. N Subba Rao, a farmer from the village, harvested three tonnes of paddy from just one kilogramme of seeds. Other farmers followed suit and the village...

-Express News Service   Having resisted the export of foodgrain since taking charge in January, Food Minister K V Thomas on Wednesday said that he was not opposed to export of “some quantity of wheat and rice” as there is bumper production in the country. Thomas’s statement holds significance as he has been publicly speaking against foodgrain export, citing the proposed food security law. “Our department is not negative to the idea of...

When he drank poison on January 11, farmer Hargovind Harne’s run-down hut was bursting with freshly harvested paddy. Yet he was neck-deep in debt. Even the bottle of pesticide that he used to take his own life had been bought on credit, as the bill shows. His large stock of grain wasn’t the only puzzle in the 47-year-old’s suicide. Vidarbha is infamous for continuing suicides by cotton farmers but Harne grew food,...

-The Indian Express   Reeling under the pressure of huge foodgrain stocks, well above the storage capacity across the country, the government on Thursday decided to send 50 lakh tonnes of grains to the states at much below the minimum support price (MSP), leaving a window open for export at a later date. “We will look into the issue once the Agriculture Minister is back in town,” Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is...