-Hindustan Times Commerce minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said that the WTO will have to give a permanent solution to India’s food security issue. HT explains. * What has WTO got to do with food security? The World Trade Organisation was established in 1995 to facilitate trade among members, who now number at 161. The WTO facilitates trade through rounds of negotiations — there have been nine rounds till now, the latest being the...

-The Financial Express A new crop insurance scheme the Modi government is set to roll out shortly seeks to cap the premium paid by farmers at about 3% of the insured value. A new crop insurance scheme the Modi government is set to roll out shortly seeks to cap the premium paid by farmers at about 3% of the insured value, cover a substantial part of the country’s farmland and crop output...

-The Financial Express Come January, Food Corporation of India (FCI), under a severe financial crunch, may be forced to trim its procurement operations. Come January, Food Corporation of India (FCI), under a severe financial crunch, may be forced to trim its procurement operations. Unless the finance ministry releases a good part of the unpaid subsidy of Rs 58,000 crore or let Life Insurance Corporation raise Rs 40,000 crore to support FCI soon,...

-Down to Earth From providing agricultural information for specific countries to identifying trends in the sector, censuses serve a variety of purpose In the backdrop of a round of country-driven agricultural censuses which will begin in 2016 to gather information and statistics on the global agriculture sector, senior FAO statiscian Jairo Castano discusses with Down To Earth the importance of the exercise. * How helpful are agricultural censuses in gathering information and statistics...

-Financial Express The country must double its support to farmers, from the current levels of about 6-8% of the value of agri-output It was in the mid-1980s that the ‘India-Bharat’ phraseology was fist pushed into political jargon, by farmers’ leader Sharad Joshi, with ‘India’ representing the urban elite of the country and ‘Bharat’ synonymous with its neglected rural folk. Joshi, at the time, was leading lakhs of farmers protesting against anti-farmer policies,...