-Livemint.com Spoilage and pilferage are not something the country can afford given its low ranking in the hunger index The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently approved a proposal to restructure around Rs30,000 crore of food credit given to Punjab state agencies, allowing for the conversion of cash credit into a 20-year loan at a lower interest rate. The central bank also sanctioned a cash credit limit of Rs26,000 crore for this...

-The Hindu Business Line In Uttar Pradesh, women find their calling in rearing small livestock The ten women’s Self Help Groups (SHGs) or samoohs of Naithu village of Badaun, Uttar Pradesh are doing such good business in goat rearing that they call them their ATM cards. The 120 women of these samoohs were not affluent enough to buy buffaloes and cows despite the loans available, so they settled for rearing goats, paying Rs....

-The Indian Express In a scenario of depressed crop prices, a unique PPP model in milk shows the way out. Coimbatore: For roughly a decade from 2004-05 to 2013-14, Indian farmers experienced rising incomes from higher crop prices year after year — something they pretty much took for granted. That party ended with the crash in global commodity prices, hitting agricultural exports hard and translating into lower farm-gate realisations for most crops. But...

-The Indian Express Again, going by NSSO data, while 11.9 per cent of an average Indian agricultural household’s monthly income comes from “farming of animals”, it is well over 24 per cent for Gujarat. Gujarat has a relatively low per agricultural household debt of Rs 38,100, as against the all-India average of Rs 47,000, according to the National Sample Survey Office’s (NSSO) data for 2012-13. Also, 79.2 per cent of the state’s...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Once the central or state government fixes and notifies the retail sale price, retailers cannot sell essential commodities such as pulses, sugar, milk and edible oils at higher prices in the guise of selling such items in packets. Learning from recent experiences of exceptional spurt in prices of pulses and particularly huge difference between loose dal and those sold in packets, the consumer affairs ministry has...