-The Tribune Hoshiarpur: Progressive farmer of backward Kandi area of Hoshiarpur district, Parlad Singh from Namolihar village, has become a role model for others by adopting organic farming. Beginning in 1998 with the cultivation of his 7 acres of ancestral land, he is now successfully practising diversified organic farming. He has been earning a much greater deal as compared to traditional wheat-paddy farming. Parlad said starting with his 7 acres of ancestral...

-The Hindu Business Line Palm oil imports slow down in May Bengaluru/ Ahmedabad: The Centre has increased the import duty on crude and refined soft edible oils such as soy oil, sunflower oil and rapeseed on Thursday. Duty on crude soft edible oils has been hiked to 35 per cent and on and soft oils to 45 per cent. Earlier, crude soy oil attracted an import duty of 30 per cent, and sunflower...

-The Indian Express Area under ‘unapproved’ herbicide-tolerant hybrids likely to fall this year Nagpur: Last year, almost 35 lakh packets of genetically modified (GM) cotton seeds, incorporating unapproved ‘herbicide-tolerance’ or HT technology, were bought and planted by farmers across India. But this time round, state governments seem better prepared to curb this illegal cultivation, even as Sowing of cotton is over in northwest India and is about to commence in the...

-Livemint.com India needs to defend policies that make agriculture remunerative and stand by its poor at this stage of development In an attempt to combat rural distress, the Union budget announced this year by finance minister Arun Jaitley promised a new deal to farmers—minimum support prices (MSP) that would be 150% of the cost of production. The government is expected to announce the first set of support prices under the new policy in...

-The Hindu Business Line New Delhi: Sowing in the current kharif season has commenced in right earnest with an area of 54 lakh hectares (lh) brought under cultivation till Friday, according to data released by the Agriculture Ministry. A total of 55 lh was covered during the same period last year. This is despite the fact that the total live storage capacity in 76 reservoirs used for irrigation stood at 22.66 billion...