-PTI Patna: Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh on Saturday said the central government was working on a new crop insurance scheme to help farmers tackle flood, drought and plant diseases in a better manner. He said it will be launched soon across the country, as the existing scheme has not proved to be beneficial to the farmers. Details will be unveiled during the Budget session of the Parliament, he added. Singh also...
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Despite record onion yield, prices shoot up -Subodh Varma
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: There has to be something drastically wrong somewhere when onion prices start rising just after the largest ever harvest of onions. In 2013-14, India harvested 19.3 million metric tons of onions. That's 15% more than the previous year. This is not the final figure: it is the latest estimates put out by the agriculture ministry and may go up or down by a couple of...
More »Agriculture ministry readies plan to deal with poor monsoon -Vishwa Mohan & Dipak Kumar Dash
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The government is ready with a contingency plan to deal with below normal rains this monsoon with a series of steps including diesel subsidy for farmers in the rain-deficient districts, crop loans at lower rates and release of foodgrains to deal with a possible shortage. Amid reports of below normal rains, the agriculture ministry presented the plan for 500 districts during a meeting called by Prime...
More »Agriculture And Not The Stock Market Is The Reality Of India -Roshan Kishore
-The Citizen.in This piece is a rejoinder to an article by D K Joshi, which appeared in ‘The Indian Express' on June 4, 2014. The main arguments made by the author are neither new nor unique. Many neoliberal economists, including some occupying crucial policy-making positions have been making arguments which propose dilution of Minimum Support Price (MSP) policies to take care of excess food stocks with the government and also control...
More »Sowing Revolution -Milind Wani
-Himal South Asian Agroecology as an alternative to India's failed agrarian system. Last September, inflation, as indicated by the wholesale price index, rose to a seven-month high of 6.46 percent. Food inflation was at 18.4 percent, and was led by skyrocketing onion prices, which increased by a whopping 323 percent. While the Union Minister for Agriculture, Sharad Pawar, ascribed the phenomenon to nothing more than a seasonal shortage, practices such as...
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