-Livemint.com Spending on irrigation, crop insurance to be doubled; e-platform to be developed for farm produce New Delhi: The government is set to double annual spending on irrigation and crop insurance, and develop a national digital platform for farm produce in order to ensure better prices for farmers, as part of a push to reduce rural distress following the first back-to-back drought in India in three decades. “We’re expecting that the new...

-Bloomberg/ NDTV Crouched in the shade beside a mud hut near her parched wheat fields in central India, Harkiya is getting desperate. India's first back-to-back droughts in three decades left the 47-year-old widow with no income. She lives on money borrowed from relatives, and has no cash to take her sick daughter to the hospital -- all the more worrying because her husband and son died from a mysterious illness last...

-Hindustan Times Khargone (MP): At a time when the agriculture sector is in distress and farmer suicides have become common, a group of farmers from madhya pradesh’s Khargone are making use of social media network to practice modern farming, ensure best prices for their produce, and also prevent crop failure. The group – comprising more than 50 farmers – uses WhatsApp and Facebook to not only stay connected, but also to keep...

Although there is sufficient data and evidence available in the public domain to argue whether there has been halving of poverty between 1990 and 2015, the same cannot be said with conviction about the halving of hunger—one of the targets set under the erstwhile Millennium Development Goals framework (replaced recently by SDGs). This is because the recently released data by the National Family Health Survey-4 (conducted in 2015-16) and the...

-Livemint.com Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana will kick in from April, before planting for the next rain-fed kharif crop begins The government wants to cover 50% of all farmers under a new and revamped crop insurance policy that seeks to shield farmers from weather-related risks, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Thursday. The new scheme, Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), was approved by the cabinet on 13 January to address rural...