-Livemint.com On demonetisation’s impact on the agriculture sector, the Economic Survey said higher winter plantings may not necessarily lead to higher production New Delhi: India’s farm sector is entwined in regulation and is a living legacy of the socialist era, the Economic Survey released on Tuesday said, criticizing curbs on marketing of agriculture produce and imposition of stock limits on traders. “While progress has been made in the last two years, producers (farmers)...

-The Indian Express Considering all these aspects, farmers had higher expectation that Budget 2017-18 would give them the best deal. However, this expectation was not met. It is now widely recognised and reported that farmers in India are facing a distressing situation. During 1995-96 to 2015-16, about 3 lakh farmers in the country committed suicide due to economic distress and depression. The Election Manifesto of Bharatiya Janata Party in both 1998 and...

-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...

-The Hindu The interaction between people and land is as old as human evolution. When early hunter-gatherers started to settle down in the Neolithic transition and practise agriculture, they began to change their relationship with land in a major way. Starting with the Holocene, approximately 11,500 years ago, many plants were domesticated for agriculture. These and the associated social and technological changes led to dense human settlements that then paved the...

-Business Standard The organisations demanded higher budgetary allocation for irrigation Some farmers’ organisations have demanded the Centre announce an income guarantee law for them to ensure a minimum income when crops fail and also when prices crash due to a bumper harvest. To be called the Remunerative and Universal Price Yield Assurance (RUPYA) Act, the legislation would guarantee a price deficiency payment in the event of a price crash, a market intervention scheme...