-The Hindu Business Line While proposals on agri-warehousing and viability-gap funding are positive, MGNREGA cutbacks could have been avoided The Economic Survey had a full chapter on agriculture and food management issues, highlighting the role of agricultural GDP; Minimum Support Price (MSP) regime, mechanisation of agriculture, farm credit, crop insurance, agri research and education, including in allied sectors such as livestock and fisheries, food processing and agricultural trade, besides rationalisation of food...

-Business Standard Natural farming is an alternative to chemical fertiliser-based and high input cost agriculture After decades of intensive agriculture, farms and farmers are in a crisis, food markets remain distorted, and consumers do not have access to nutritious diets. India needs a shift towards sustainable food systems. Among many alternative farming techniques is natural farming, with the potential to improve sustainability and also meliorate government finances. Natural farming is an alternative to...

-Down to Earth Govt policy think tank asks chief secretaries to extract nutrients from human excreta and use them in place of fertilsers Explore the possibility of extracting essential nutrients like phosphorus, nitrogen, potassium and carbon from human excreta and replace fertilisers used in agriculture with them, the Niti Ayog has advised all states. Faecal sludge is a rich source of nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P) and potassium (K), the three essential nutrients used...

-The Indian Express In Odisha, procurement of paddy during the ongoing 2019-20 Kharif Marketing Season (KMS) is, for the first time, being done from registered farmers only after Aadhaar-based biometric authentication. FIRST IT was fertilisers, where the NDA government made disbursal of subsidy conditional upon actual sales to farmers getting registered on PoS (Point of Sale) machines in retail outlets. That reform measure — to ensure that the benefit of minimum support...

-The Indian Express Farmer unions need to expand the scope of their advocacy. Every day, a gold miner in Russia leaves a mine with a wheelbarrow full of sand. Every day, the guard thoroughly checks the sand. On his retirement day, the guard asks the worker, “I know you have been stealing something, but can’t figure out what it is”. The worker whispers back, “I wasn’t hiding anything in the sand,...