-Hindustan Times The government plans to cover 10.25 lakh farmers in its waiver scheme, and simple calculation says it involves Rs 20,500 crore. The state has 18 lakh farmers. Of the total, therefore, 56% farmers would be covered. Chandigarh: Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Monday announced crop loan waiver of up to Rs 2 lakh for farmers who own up to 5 acres of Agriculture land and a flat relief...

-The Indian Express Branding the farmer agitations ‘political’ betrays a lack of understanding There is no proof required that economists commenting on farmer issues have reached an affliction point. When the counsellor one seeks advice from is as callous as saying that the farmers’ agitation was political and justifies it by citing declining farmer suicides and rising farmer prosperity (‘Just why are farmers rioting?’ by Surjit Bhalla, IE, June 10), one can’t...

-Hindustan Times Madhya Pradesh’s Babulal Dahiya is a collector of folk songs and seeds and has sown 110 varieties of rice to preserve them. Bhopal: He is a collector of folk songs and seeds. And it was while collecting Bagheli folklore, this 72-year-old farmer cum Bagheli poet realized that saving folk songs and sayings won’t mean much if the local crop varieties, which repeatedly crop up in the folk literature, are...

-The Indian Express With a glut in agricultural production, prices have fallen below MSPs. The government needs to get the agri-market right to address the farm crisis The farmers’ protests in Madhya Pradesh (MP) and Maharashtra indicate that all is not well on the economic front, especially Agriculture. If such unrest could happen in MP, which claims to have registered the fastest agri-GDP growth at 9.7 per cent per year during...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The recent crisis in Madhya Pradesh where farmers had to sell onions at throwaway prices or dump it in farms due to bumper production has prompted the government to look at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) to set up irradiation facilities in the state and elsewhere in the country to deal with the problem of plenty by increasing the shelf life of perishable horticultural...