-The Hindu Business Line The Government should honour its MSP promise and lift trade curbs The Government move to impose an import duty of 10 per cent on wheat and tur is a timely one. With a bumper harvest likely in wheat this year, market prices have dropped below MSP. Apart from estimates of higher arrivals in mandis, higher imports in recent months too have hit prices. In January alone, 1.13 million...

-PRS Legislative Research The key findings of the report entitled: State of Agriculture in India by Tanvi Deshpande (March, 2017) are as follows: * The agriculture sector employs nearly half of the workforce in the country.  However, it contributes to 17.5% of the GDP (at current prices in 2015-16). * Over the past few decades, the manufacturing and services sectors have increasingly contributed to the growth of the economy, while the agriculture sector’s...

-The Hindu Business Line Kutch presents an example of robust desert horticulture Over the past decade, the total horticultural land under cultivation of fruits such as pomegranate, mango and date palm has doubled in Kutch and its fruit production has trebled. And why is this a surprise? Because this semi-arid region in Kutch has, through 10 years of toil, transformed the landscape and set an innovative example in desert horticulture. Adversity, they say, can...

-The Times of India CHENNAI: Failure of monsoon and farmers' distress have forced the state government to scale down the target for foodgrains production for the next financial year to 100 lakh tonnes, a 32% fall from the initial target set for the current financial year. Announcing this while presenting the budget, finance minister D Jayakumar said a slew of measures was being taken to overcome the water shortage. Considering that...

-Livemint.com An agriculture ministry notification issued last week said the maximum sale price of BG-II Bt cotton will be Rs800 per 450gm packet of seeds New Delhi: After a reduction in the retail price and royalty fees of genetically modified (GM) Bt cotton seeds last year, the agriculture ministry has kept prices unchanged for the upcoming Kharif crop season. According to a notification issued by the farm ministry on 10 March, maximum sale...