-The Hindu Business Line There are no schemes for much of agriculture, and small ruminants have been ignored. The Economic Survey had a full chapter on agriculture and food management issues. It had a separate section on small ruminants for the first time, and also showed that only one of the ongoing schemes for the livestock sector attends to their concerns. The Budget provides for creating a fund for upgrading of traditional industries...

-Livemint.com Panel on doubling farm incomes proposes shifting from supply-led to demand-led production system New Delhi: The government should undertake a radical overhaul of the agriculture ecosystem by moving from a supply-push production system to a demand-led one, according to a committee set up by the centre to recommend strategies to double farmer incomes by 2022. The agriculture ministry should also set up an “empowered committee” to operationalize and monitor progress of doubling...

-The Hindu Efforts to make agriculture climate-resilient must be scaled up and consolidated The pervasiveness of climatic aberrations and the associated socio-economic vulnerability are now widely recognised and experienced across the globe. The Sixth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on “Global Warming at 1.5°C” distinctly propagates the need to strengthen and enhance existing coping capacity and to remain committed to the objectives of the Paris Agreement. The report...

-The Hindu Business Line They account for a third of the agricultural workforce, but don’t get the benefits and opportunities the menfolk enjoy India celebrated its first Women Farmer’s Day on October 15, but the word farmer or kisan is still seen as being synonymous with a male farm worker. This perception is built on two assumptions — first, farming is a masculine profession; and, second, when women are involved in farm...

-The Hindu With the ‘feminisation of agriculture’ picking up pace, the challenges women farmers face can no longer be ignored October 15 is observed, respectively, as International Day of Rural Women by the United Nations, and National Women’s Farmer’s Day (Rashtriya Mahila Kisan Diwas) in India. In 2016, the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare decided to take the lead in celebrating the event, duly recognising the multidimensional role of women at...