-The Indian Express Farm incomes may not revive despite good monsoon. There are new challenges for policymakers. India’s per capita calorie demand has been falling for at least the last 30 years. Most people do a double-take when they hear that. One can’t debate the fact much: National Sample Surveys every five to seven years have documented this. What we can debate are the reasons behind this: In their 2009 paper Angus...

Rising prices of dal: How to deal with it? The 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly declared 2016 as the International Year of Pulses. In India, however, ordinary citizens are under enormous duress due to the skyrocketing prices of dal/ lentils since the last one year. The website of Price Monitoring Cell of the Department of Consumer Affairs shows that dal prices varied across places. For example, the...

-The Indian Express A Pulses Revolution is possible even in the most backward districts, as a PPP project in Bundelkhand has shown. Damoh (Madhya Pradesh): Zahim Khan has two major worries, as he surveys the urad (black gram) crop on 14 out of the 20-acres land being jointly cultivated by him with 13 other farmers. The immediate concern is rains. Damoh district in Madhya Pradesh’s Bundelkhand region, of which his village Somkheda is...

-Livemint.com The difference between wholesale and retail prices was as high as 52% for a variety of pulses, shows an analysis of available data New Delhi: High prices of pulse varieties have been a constant point of worry for consumers and governments over the past year. While consecutive years of deficit rain cut supplies, leading to higher imports and a spike in prices, what went unnoticed is the divergence between retail...

-The New Indian Express CHENNAI: In the quiet corners of the State, farmers of five panchayats have been silently revolutionising pulse farming. Under ‘Pulse Panchayat’, an MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) initiative, over 1000 farmers in Pudukkotai have managed to achieve a 60% increase in the yield and also increasing the land under pulses cultivation in the three years since the project was started in 2013, the farmers said. What was first started...