-The Hindu Business Line India is heading for a record production of rice, the main cereal crop in 2018-19, despite a dismal performance of the monsoon. The Agriculture Ministry’s second advance estimates has pegged the rice production at a record 115.60 million tonnes, about 2.38 per cent higher than the latest or fourth advance estimates for 2017-18. The Bumper production is on account of substantial increase in production during the kharif season,...

-News18.com Acclaimed journalist and Founder-Editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India, P Sainath attributes the existential crisis confronting India’s agrarian society to macro-economic policies set in motion 25 years ago. Talking to Anuradha SenGupta, Sainath makes a case for state intervention in agriculture and says the Modi government, with its shifting positions and policies like demonetisation has only aggravated the assault on agrarian livelihoods. Dismissing the buzz about imminent new initiatives...

-Down to Earth Farmers and cold storage owners pay the price of producing and storing bumper crops as wholesale prices dip by 39-50 per cent in December Hit by low wholesale prices, potato farmers in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab have not been able to recover even the production cost of the crop as market price of potatoes crashed by 39-50 per cent in December 2018, shows the latest report on the crop...

-Newsclick.in An indifferent Modi government promises to eliminate hunger not before 2030. Celebrations were barely over in New Delhi on the news that the 2017-18 agricultural year had yielded a record harvest of both foodgrains (284.83 million tonnes) and fruits and vegetables (307 million tonnes) when another bit of news trickled in last week, largely ignored by the government. This was that India stood at rank 103 in the Global Hunger Index...

-Financial Express After government estimates said that Indian agriculture could be heading for bumper kharif crop harvest, experts say that it could provide a major fillip to rice exports. However, the development could potentially put increased pressure on the government to buy the crops at the MSPs, if market rates fall below the benchmark rates on bumper arrivals at mandis. According to government estimates production of kharif foodgrains for 2018-19 crop year...