Heavy damages estimated for in cotton, chana, castor crop. Unseasonal rains in the state of Gujarat during September - November, 2010 has cost the state agriculture sector Rs 3,312 crore with key cash crops including groundnut, cotton, castor seed and pulses taking a major blow among other agriculture commodities. The state minister for agriculture, Dilip Sanghani on Thursday informed that as of December 31, 2010 the total damage to the state agriculture...

Prof Abhijit Sen, member of the Planning Commission, discusses Budget provisions related to the agriculture sector in an interview with Rajesh Bhayani and Sanjeeb Mukherjee. Sen feels, futures trading in essentials commodities like wheat and rice should not be allowed. According to him, India should follow China in having an agency for procuring commodities from the global market. There seems to a renewed focus in this Budget on ancillary items of...

The policy is to promote specific high-value segments within agriculture, where corporate houses have major profit interests. A COMMON compliment that Pranab Mukherjee's Union Budget for 2011-12 received from the media was its proclaimed “friendliness” to agriculture and rural areas. It was not just the media; members of India Inc. welcomed the Budget as “focussed” on agriculture. However, a close look at the Budget estimates reveals a different picture. Public...

World Bank president Robert Zoellick recently listed nine measures that the G20 should adopt under its current French presidency. These range from improving information about grain stocks and developing better weather-forecasting methods to strengthening social safety nets for the poor and helping small farmers benefit from tenders from humanitarian purchasers such as the World Food Programme . These measures tackle only the symptoms of the global food system's weaknesses, leaving the...

There is a silver lining to the drought that hit India in 2009-10. Although it sapped the country's growth, it led to an almost doubling of physical assets created under the government's flagship rural employment scheme that year. The drought of 2009-10 was the worst that the country had faced in 17 years. As regular jobs in the farm sector dried up, more people sought work under the Mahatma Gandhi National...