-Livemint.com Effective policy changes at the state-level are needed as this is where the problem and its solutions lie—and not in a National Agricultural Market There have been many attempts at alleviating the pain of the farmer in India, be it natural calamities or market risks, but nothing seems to work, and the problems of farmer distress and indebtedness continue to grow. For some time now, there has been a focus...

-The Hindu This agriculture dept. offering will also help them find out fertilizer availability Tamil Nadu: As farmers in the delta districts eagerly await the opening of the Mettur dam, they are also thinking of other things they need – seeds and fertilizers. To ensure that farmers get their inputs on time, the agriculture department has recently introduced a system whereby they can check availability online. Using smart phones, it has linked 9,600...

-The Hindu Business Line But they needn’t, if India sticks to the view that the benchmark price for measuring extent of support is too low and outdated India is concerned over the delay in reaching a ‘permanent solution’ to the problem of dealing with food procurement subsidies. The WTO members are thrashing out a work programme for the 10th Ministerial to be held in Nairobi this December. Under Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), developing...

-IPS News LUDHIANA: Long-term agricultural growth in India is slowing down. The lands that saw remarkable increases in productivity in the 1970s and 80s, thanks to the technology rolled out as part of the first “Green Revolution”, are not yielding the same results today. India still has the second highest number of undernourished people in the world. To confront this problem, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called for a Second Green Revolution on Indian...

-Deccan Herald Those who sipped a cup of Yashoda’s home-brewed tea have never been unimpressed. The special tea is prepared using locally available herbs and aromatic leaves. Yashoda and her husband Chandraprakash of Biligerepalya village in Tiptur taluk of Tumakuru district are well-known for their innovative activities that include value addition of agricultural produces. Until 2008, the couple were into chemical farming, much like everyone else around them. At a time when they were grappling...