-The Hindu Business Line Hyderabad: The Centre is hoping to achieve a growth rate of 8 per cent in the economy and 4 per cent in the agriculture sector this year. “We are growing at the rate of 7 per cent and this year we hope our agriculture growth will be more than 4 per cent,” Arjun Meghwal, Union Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs, has said. Addressing the valedictory...

-The Hindu Business Line This kharif, with its high pulses output, provides an opportunity to push procurement, processing — and lift curbs on exports Pulses have been in the news over the last one year and for all the wrong reasons. Sharply lower harvests two years in a row (2014-15 and 2015-16) due to a below-normal southwest monsoon in the kharif season and unseasonal rains during the rabi harvest combined with rising...

-The Times of India VIJAYAWADA: The agriculture sector in Andhra Pradesh is in the throes of a major crisis. Notwithstanding the claims of chief minister Chandrababu Naidu that his government has won the war on drought by deploying rain guns and taking up drought-mitigation measures, the kharif season -- which has just ended -- has been a big dampener for the farming community. What is shocking is that crop acreage in the...

-The Telegraph Algiers (Algeria): At a time when a debate over triple talaq and the need for a uniform civil code rages in India, a Sunni Muslim-dominated country that Vice-President Hamid Ansari just visited offers some interesting insight. Algeria, the north African country that figures in the Modi regime's Africa outreach, last year adopted a law criminalising domestic violence against women despite conservative Muslims terming it an intrusion into a couple's privacy. The...

Expanding irrigation network in the country is considered as essential to raise agricultural production in the face of increased frequency of droughts. However, a newly released report from the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare shows that there has actually been a fall in the growth rate of net irrigated area during the recent two decades. The report entitled State of Indian Agriculture 2015-16 reveals that the growth rate in...