-Livemint.com Farmers need structural reforms, crop diversification and greater public investment rather than subsidies and price support Indian agriculture has been relatively untouched by the structural reforms that lifted incomes in other parts of the economy. Low farm productivity meant that governments tried to improve the lot of farmers through price policy. The problem is that engineering a shift in the terms of trade through higher support prices usually leads to generalized...

-Newsclick.in An average urban family suffers from chronic undernutrition, with its food consumption deficient in protein, energy, and important vitamins and minerals. A recently released report on the Nutritional Status of Urban Population by National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau (NNMB), throws light on the chronic undernutrition faced by India’s urban population, particularly the urban poor. The report compares the average consumption of different food groups by the urban population, to the scientifically calculated Required...

-The Hindu Business Line Proposes single trading licence, single-point levy of market fee New Delhi: The Agriculture Ministry has come up with a new model Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) Act proposing single-point levy of market fee across a State and a united single trading licence for cost-effectiveness of transactions. It has also suggested abolition of fragmentation of market with the State/Union Territory by removing the concept of notified market area insofar as...

-The Hindu  The Centre’s coercive method has worked. Tamil Nadu and Kerala, the two States that were holding out against pressure from New Delhi to implement the National Food Security Act (NFSA), have also fallen in line. By threatening to raise the price at which it was allocating foodgrains if they did not implement the law, the Centre has managed to get these two States to agree to the implementation of the Act...

-TheHansIndia.com Even through the Indian economy has been growing steadily in the post-reform years, more and more people in rural India, where 833 million Indians (70 per cent) live, people are consuming fewer nutrients than are required to stay healthy, according to a National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau (NNMB) survey. In rural population, cereals and millets form the bulk of the diet. In general, the rural population subsisting on an inadequate diet as...