-The Hindu In case of loan in both cooperative and commercial banks, the former qualifies for waiver Bengaluru: The intensive de-duplication work to identity Farmers eligible for loan waiver is expected to identify at least 7 lakh people who have loans in both cooperative sector and commercial banks, resulting in saving of at least Rs.6,000 crore to the State exchequer. A Farmer will be eligible for loan waiver from one of the...

-Financial Express Forget the fanfare about the PM-AASHA scheme that is designed to lend greater price support to Farmers, procurement of pulses and oilseeds by the public sector is likely to drop by more than a third in the kharif 2018 season from the year-ago period. The decline in procurement comes after two consecutive kharif seasons in which it surged and reached a critical mass, compared with very small quantities earlier. Just...

-The Hindu Business Line FPOs are for the small producer, typically left out by schemes and sops. They need not just inputs but marketing support Agriculture provides livelihoods to millions of small landholders in India. A few government initiatives to support Farmers — such as increased MSP, interest subsidies, free electricity, and loan waivers — reach a limited percentage of Farmers and, hence, have a limited impact. The Telangana Government’s decision to provide...

-The Indian Express The unprecedented procurement of pulses and oilseeds in the last couple of years has created problems — and opportunities. If there’s one area in agriculture where the Narendra Modi government has probably broken fresh ground, it is in the procurement of pulses and oilseeds.   During the 2016-17 and 2017-18 agricultural years (July-June), the Central agencies — National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (Nafed), Small Farmers’ Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC)...

  In its 2014 election manifesto, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), among other things, promised to "take steps to enhance the profitability in agriculture, by ensuring a minimum of 50% profits over the cost of production". In his 2018-19 Union budget speech too, the Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley informed the Parliament that the 2014 election manifesto of the BJP had stated that the Farmers should get at least 1.5 times the...