-The Hindustan Times The government on Monday admitted a mismatch between wheat procurement and storage and said efforts were on to ease pressure on go-downs by encouraging exports and providing foodgrain to MNREGA workers as part of wages. Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee’s brief statement on farmers’ light in the Lok Sabha during the zero hour came in response to vociferous protests by many political parties on the plight of farmers due...

-The Times of India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is likely to discuss the foodgrain storage and crop situation with food minister K V Thomas and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar on Wednesday amid news of a bumper harvest this year and overflowing granaries.  The meeting, slated for Monday, was postponed, and is likely to discuss options before the government to offload the grains in the central pool that are expected to reach record...

Consumers may have to pay substantially more for pulses, oilseed, and rice in the coming months if the government accepts the recommendations of an expert panel to increase farm-gate price of these commodities by up to 30%, further stoking food inflation. The Commission on Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), under the ministry of agriculture, has recommended a 25% rise in the floor price of cotton, 16% rise in paddy, 30% rise...

-Reuters   PERLE: As a shiny red harvester bounces across the black earth into the first row of sugar cane, excited schoolchildren run after it and several dozen men stand gaping in the wake of its swift progress. It's the first time that Perle, a village on the banks of the Krishna river in Maharashtra state, has seen a machine used for cutting the tough cane. "This machine will harvest my entire field today,"...

HETA, India – At the entrance to this village in India’s eastern state of Jharkhand, a large pond glistened under the bright autumn sun. Yellow and blue lilies surrounded it. A tailor was stitching clothes outside his shop while a few boys nearby were playing carrom on the lid of a rusted oil barrel. It was a tranquil, rustic setting – a candidate for a landscape painting, it seemed. But it...