-The Hindu Business Line Given the ballooning costs of storing grain, there is an urgent need to cut down excessive procurement of rice and wheat In 2018-19, wheat procurement at 35.8 million tonnes (mt) was the second highest ever. It is estimated that by the end of kharif marketing season in September, rice procurement may also touch an all-time high of 45 mt. With such high procurement, one of the first difficult...

-The Hindu Jaipur: The Congress government in Rajasthan has accused the Centre of adopting a “discriminatory attitude” towards the State’s farmers, reflected in the lower targets set for procurement of mustard and gram on minimum support prices in comparison with the national average. A ceiling of 25-quintal purchase on a day has been set for the farmers. State Cooperative Minister Udai Lal Anjana has taken up the matter with Union Agriculture Minister Radha...

-The Indian Express Chhattisgarh, Bengal and UP emerge frontrunners in extending MSP-plus support to farmers Call it the impact of the ensuing national elections: Governmental procurement of rice, the country’s largest crop by planted area, looks set to surpass 40 million tonnes (mt) for the time ever in the current marketing year that runs from October to September. That would work out to more than a third of the total projected...

-The Hindu The Interim Budget makes clear the class hierarchy in the Modi government’s scheme of populism Interim Budget 2019 has sought to make amends for all the wrongs of almost five years of the Narendra Modi government. For example, the debilitating impact of demonetisation on the informal sector that employs nearly 90% of the workforce had long been suspected on the basis of anecdotal evidence. The findings of the National Sample...

-The Hindu Steps like limited procurement, boosting productivity and consolidating land holdings can help reduce agrarian distress Recently, there has been active discussion on the strategies addressing farm distress. There are media reports that the ‘interim Budget’ may focus on the farm sector among other things. Agrarian distress, in the present context, is mainly in terms of low agricultural prices and, consequently, poor farm incomes. Low productivity in agriculture and related supply...