The government failed to reach an agreement with the Members of Parliament, who moved for amendments to the Seeds Bill on the issue of price regulation and penalty for failure of seeds in a meeting convened by the Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar here on Wednesday. On other amendments, the members either convinced the government or got convinced. The government will now consult the Ministry of Law on the two issues, Mr...

Crops are grown outside our towns. Anger over food prices grows in our towns. Put these two facts together, and you can figure out exactly how divorced, sometimes, the justifiable concern about food inflation is from the cold realities of agriculture. It is not as if we can really blame ourselves for blindness, either; the unreformed, statist nature of price discovery in agriculture insulates us, as in no other sector,...

With the inflation rate of pulses still in double digits for more than a year, the government today said the supply of pulses would remain a critical problem for another two to three years. The government is expecting an increase of two million tonnes (mt) in production of pulses in the current crop year (July 2010-June 2011). “So far as pulses are concerned, it is going to be a critical problem not...

THE fast-depleting groundwater levels and subsidised electricity supply to farmers in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh spell doom for agricultural productivity in the region regarded as the “Food Bowl of India”, and has prompted the government to turn its gaze towards the eastern region for fulfilling its food security ambitions. A background note drafted by the department of agriculture and cooperation (DoAC) for the two-daylong workshop on the theme...

EVEN as the fate of Bt brinjal hangs in balance, the parliamentary standing committee attached to the agriculture ministry has started examining the pros and cons of introducing genetically-modified food in India, with a panel of experts coming out in favour of setting up a regulatory mechanism to monitor their implications. At the first meeting of the parliamentary panel on the sensitive subject here this afternoon, three experts, including Delhi...