-The Indian Express Raising agricultural exports requires the government to unburden policy of consumer bias. A balance should be struck between meeting the needs of food-insecure consumers and income-insecure farmers. The Agriculture Minister, Radha Mohan Singh, recently tweeted about the government’s resolve to increase the value of the country’s agricultural exports to $100 billion by 2022-23. The Dalwai Committee Report on doubling farmers’ incomes also talked of a similar target. It said,...

-The Indian Express Nashik, Maharashtra; In state producing most onions, 60% grown here Nashik: As Santosh Gorade, 38, tends to his 3.5 acres of onion crop, he says he will do this for “maximum six-seven years more”. After that, the farmer from Takli Vinchur village in Nashik plans to get out of farming. “It’s too volatile and market forces are always against us,” he sighs. Under no circumstances, he adds, does he...

-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...

-PTI Being a strategic mineral resource, indigenous production can save the much-needed foreign exchange, in which laterites can play a significant role, like bauxite, which is mined from south Goa. Panaji (Goa): Iron ore reserves in Goa may exhaust in another 10 years and if there are too many companies involved in mining and the pace of excavation is high, the stocks may not even last for five years, an expert said...

-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...