-The Indian Express Last week, India and the US reached an understanding on working out a "permanent solution" to the issue of public stockholding for food security purposes at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The deal is seen as a breakthrough, ending the impasse that had stalled the implementation of a landmark Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) hammered out at the WTO's ministerial conference in Bali last December. * What is this deal...
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Your food is not cheaper yet, but wait a while -Harish Damodaran
-The Indian Express * Have global agri-commodity prices fallen? By how much? They have. The Food and Agricultural Organisation's latest Food Price Index (base: 2002-04 = 100) of 192.3 for October is down 6.9 per cent compared to a year ago, and 19.1% below the all-time high of 237.7 reached in February 2011. Prices of commodities such as corn, wheat, soybean, sugar and palm oil traded in international futures exchanges are today...
More »Cotton farmers hit by falling prices, rising input costs and China’s import squeeze -Gopal B Kateshiya & Vivek Deshpande
-The Indian Express Rajkot/ Nagpur: For Kanaksinh Jadeja, Arvind Bhoyar and Rubhash Jakhar, cotton symbolised hope and a reason to believe there was still a future in agriculture. All three farmers - from Panchiyavadar in Gondal taluka of Rajkot (Gujarat), Ashi in Warora tehsil of Chandrapur (Maharashtra) and Patrewala in Fazilka (Punjab) respectively - made decent money over the last 10 years by growing cotton. They were helped by two factors. The first...
More »Farm distress looms as global crop prices crash after 10-year bull run -Harish Damodaran
-The Indian Express For the last 10 years, farmers in India benefited from both increased production and higher price realisations - leading to rising rural incomes and declining poverty rates. That happy story may now be near its end - which could be the precursor to a renewed crisis in agriculture. The main reason is declining global prices for most agri-commodities (see Table 1). Over the last five-six months, corn, wheat and...
More »Farmers staring at one of the worst crop failures -Snehlata Shrivastav
-The Times of India NAGPUR (Maharashtra): Though untimely, delayed, erratic, insufficient or excess rains have been ruining crops in the region for the last few years, farmers claim this year will see the worst crop failures in recent times. All three major Vidarbha crops, cotton, soyabean and orange, have suffered huge losses due to the truant rains. Generally, at least one crop survives nature's vagaries so farmers get some income. But this...
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