-Down to Earth Traders have already placed orders for importing 100,000 tonnes from Australia The unseasonal heavy rains and hailstorm of March and April this year, which left millions of farmers in north India in distress, may impact international wheat prices. Indian traders, especially from south India, have started importing wheat from Australia and other parts of world in the wake of poor yields in India and lower international price. These imports may push up...

-The Indian Express Dealing with the farm distress, while simultaneously creating enough non-farm job opportunities, is going to be a tough task. Call it bad luck or otherwise, the Narendra Modi government’s first year in office hasn’t been a really great one for agriculture and rural incomes. To start with, rainfall was deficient in both the south-west (June-September) and the north-east (October-December) monsoon seasons by over 12 per cent and 33 per...

-The Indian Express One area that has seen some reform, though, relates to minimum support prices (MSP) payable on official paddy and wheat purchases. The “perfect storm” kicked up by extreme weather events and lower crop price realisations — not to mention the political backlash resulting from its controversial land acquisition ordinance — has meant that the first year of the Modi sarkar has gone by without any major reforms in...

-The Financial Express At today’s prices, imports cost less than Indian grain Imagine the irony. India has 34 million tonnes of wheat stocks with the Food Corporation of India (FCI) already and another 3-4 million will get added to this by July 1, but the country is still importing wheat, albeit in very small quantities. By July 1, FCI’s wheat and rice stocks will cross 60 million tonnes as compared to the...

-The Indian Express Policy played a major role in helping the state claim no. 2 spot in wheat procurement. Vidisha: For Sandeep Baghel, the spanking state-of-the-art silos about 8 km from the mandi here are symbolic of the sheer transformation in the infrastructure for procurement and storage of grains, from the chaos of the past when farmers like him spent days on end to sell their wheat to state agencies. But the awe...