-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Retail inflation cooled to five-year low in January on the back of sliding vegetable and food prices but the lurking price pressure may prompt the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to maintain a wait-and-watch policy on interest rate for now. Data released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) on Monday showed inflation, as measured by the consumer price index (CPI), rose 3.2% in January, slower than...
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Cotton farmers counting the losses -Rutam Vora, KV Kurmanath and Vishwanath Kulkarni
-The Hindu Business Line Rising pest attacks are mounting pressure on cotton farmers even as prices play truant. Rajeshbhai Patel is not amused. The farmer in Kadi, northern Gujarat grew cotton on four bigha in this year’s kharif season, instead of 11 in 2016. He had reduced the acreage fearing increasing costs owing to pests attacks. But as cotton prices rule at unusually high levels in the ongoing harvest season, he...
More »Note ban has caused loss of Rs 20,000-50,000 per acre, claims famers' union
-IANS New Delhi: India’s cash-driven agri sector continues to reel under the effects of demonetisation, with farmers growing fruits and vegetables suffering “huge losses”, say farm leaders who want the Union budget to “compensate” them for these losses. Amid reports of farmers dumping or refusing to harvest crops like tomatoes and peas due to a crash in prices as traders did not have the cash to purchase the produce, farmer leader Ajay...
More »Towards less-cash agriculture: Well before demonetisation, low credit-driven model came up in Dewas -Vivian Fernandes
-The Financial Express In Madhya Pradesh’s tribal districts of Dewas and Khargone, the NGO, Samaj Pragati Sahayog, discourages cash transactions for agricultural inputs. The interest rates are usurious and vary according to commodities. For fertiliser, it is dheda—loan for the stuff has to be repaid 1.5 times over by the end of the harvest season. For pesticides it is sawa, or 1.25 times. Even barter can be extortionate. One quintal of...
More »How Demonetisation Has Accelerated Tamil Nadu's Deepening Agrarian Crisis -R Ramasubramanian
-TheWire.in Out of the 144 recorded farmer suicides, over 40 were from outside the Cauvery delta region. Observers and farmers directly attribute demonetisation as one major factor behind the suicides. Tamil Nadu is facing one of its worst agrarian crises since independence. All of the state’s 32 districts have been officially declared as ‘drought-affected’. In a statement issued on January 10, chief minister O. Panneerselvam announced that the move was necessitated following...
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