-Newsclick.in In 2006, chief minister Nitish Kumar scrapped the APMC Act in Bihar and the destructive effects can be seen in the seething anger amongst farmers. What the Narendra Modi government recently did through passing laws to deregulate agricultural trade, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar had accomplished 14 years ago, in 2006. Soon after becoming chief minister in alliance with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he scrapped Bihar’s Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC)...

-The Telegraph The tearing hurry with which agriculture market reforms have been pushed through, without even consulting farmers, has resulted in huge farm protests in Punjab and Haryana At a time when I see euphoria among mainstream economists over the new set of agricultural reforms, media reports say that the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices has observed that only 12 per cent of India’s paddy cultivators were able to sell their...

-The Indian Express The fight to retain the APMC despite its shortcomings is also a fight to extract a commitment from the government on maintaining state support to the agricultural sector. On Friday, September 25, farmers’ organisations across the country gave a call for a bandh to protest the three bills passed by Parliament. These bills, namely the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020 (FPTC), the Farmers (Empowerment...

-The Hindu The APMC Bypass Bill leaves too much to the benevolence of private players Three farm bills — the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill (commonly referred to as the APMC Bypass Bill), and the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill — were cleared by Parliament amid protests from the Opposition. Sudha Narayanan (Associate Professor at the...

-TheWire.in Even though India has had a few relatively successful models, contract farming has failed to take off in a meaningful manner. Of the three agriculture-related ordinances promulgated on June 5, 2020, the most predictable was ‘The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Ordinance, 2020’. Put simply, it provides a legal basis to the existing practice of contract farming in India’s agriculture and allied sectors. In 2018, the Union...