-The Indian Express Maharashtra’s dairies are experiencing the lagged effect of two years of drought now Pune: Dairies in Maharashtra have been witness to an unusual phenomenon of late. The winter months are when milk production and procurement rises, peaking in January. But this time round, shortages have developed precisely in the ‘flush’ period from September to March, when more milk naturally flows from the udders of animals. “We could procure only...

-PTI New Delhi: The government is considering imposing import duty on wheat in order to protect farmers amid projections of a record output this year, Agriculture Secretary Shobhana K. Pattanayak said today. On December 8, the government had reduced customs duty on wheat to zero from 10 per cent to boost domestic availability and check retail prices. Now that the country is all set to harvest a record production of 96.64 million tonnes...

-The Financial Express The one irrefutable lesson from MGNREGA, is that once introduced, there will be no going back India is one of the most unequal countries in the world. In terms of Gini coefficient, i.e., measure of income inequity, India ranks a dismal 135 out of 187 countries. This means that most of the prosperity that an increasingly economically liberalised India is seeing, belongs primarily to the top-income percentiles. One in...

-The Hindu Business Line prices have started to fall already; the State agencies have to ramp-up procurement at least this year Wheat farmers in Uttar Pradesh are a worried lot. Procurement of the foodgrain by government agencies in the State is meagre and a likely bumper harvest this year is stoking fears of a further slide in prices. UP contributes almost a third to the country’s total wheat production, with an annual output...

-Outlook In a pulses-importing country, a bumper crop brings little cheer to those who cultivate pulses. Here’s why In India, a bumper crop is not ­always an occasion to celebrate, as farmers have often found to their cost whether it is potato, onion or grapes. Pulses, which have always been far short of domestic needs, are facing a similar fate this year, with mandi prices in many parts of the country far...