-Business Standard Experts feel this could keep prices of major farm commodities and products dependent on them, such as poultry and meat, at an elevated level for quite some time By the end of this financial year or perhaps even earlier, depending upon the crop cycle, India might be staring at a multi-year low closing inventory levels of several key farm commodities. Stocks of sugar, wheat, cotton and oilseeds both, with traders and...

-NITI Aayog Working Paper, ISBN: 978-81-953811-7-3 Abstract -  The importance of agriculture in an economy usually declines as it climbs the development ladder. Raising agriculture productivity has been known to be an important precursor. Labour productivity in agriculture can either be increased by higher land productivity or higher land availability per farmer and mechanisation. In India, however, the dramatic increase in land productivity through industrial farming has caused severe environmental damage and...

-The Pioneer Industrial states want to import coal to make up for the shortfall Summer temperatures are soaring and so is the power demand. Some States have already scheduled planned outages. And we are now told that the power companies face shortage of coal. Industrial states want to import coal to make up for the shortfall. That is a costly proposition beyond the reach of smaller states. Is there a coal crisis?...

-The Hindu Business Line To make farmers aatmanirbhar, the governments should instead nurture a healthy credit culture and empower them via a robust ecosystem rather than relieving all the borrowers, irrespective of their distress levels. Only 4 out of the 21 political parties lost the election (either at the Centre or State) following the electoral promise and implementation of a farm loan waiver (FLW) scheme started by Haryana’s Devi Lal government. A...

-Financial Express Crop loss, lower procurement to deplete FCI stocks; local supplies may suffice for PDS, free-ration schemes At Punjab’s Rajpura mandi, private traders are busy buying the wheat crop brought in by farmers at marginally above the minimum support price (MSP). Traders have been super-active in the mandi, one of the largest centres of wheat trade in the country, and their daily purchases often exceed the official procurement by the state-run...