-Livemint.com While higher crop acreage should ensure positive growth, much depends on how September rains pan out and the kind of platform it lays out for the next crop season Caution is finally setting in for agriculture inputs stocks. As the weather office released two rain deficit reports (on a cumulative basis), shares of Rallis India Ltd, Dhanuka Agritech Ltd and Gujarat State Fertilizers & Chemicals Ltd lost a bit of...

-Livemint.com Small farmers reaped a bumper crop defying a drought and despite price shocks and pest-related risks New Delhi: Small farmers across India reaped a bumper crop of fruits and vegetables in 2015-16 defying a widespread drought. India’s horticulture output crossed a record 283 million tonnes, shows the third advance estimate released by the agriculture ministry on Monday. However, the story is not just about a record harvest during a drought year—primarily due...

-Frontline A noteworthy study that provides much-needed insights into the nature and severity of the farm crisis in Punjab. There have been many studies on agrarian distress and farmer suicides in different parts of India in the last decade, including in Punjab. Most of the studies focus on a profile of the victims, mostly landowning farmers, and reasons thereof, with a sample of such farmers. In this context, this book makes a...

-The Hindu Business Line The Government has several short and long-term strategies to achieve self-sufficiency Who can deny that pulses are at the core of the average Indian diet? Therefore, the NDA government’s multi-pronged short-term and long-term strategies to meet the growing consumption of pulses in the country — from importing to increasing production through new technologies, and making cultivation attractive to farmers — is to be welcomed. In fact, pulses play...

-Frontline The inability to resolve pressing problems with respect to the production, distribution and availability of food is one of the important failures of the entire economic reform process. IN the fateful month of July 1991, when the devaluation of the Indian rupee presaged the introduction of a whole series of liberalising economic reforms, agriculture was very far from the minds of most policymakers and commentators. The immediate focus was on...