-The Hindu Report concedes that farmers couldn’t buy seeds due to cash crunch. Millions of farmers in India were unable to buy seeds and fertilisers for their winter crops because of demonetisation, according to a report submitted by the Union Agriculture Ministry to the Parliamentary standing Committee on Finance. This official acknowledgement of the impact of demonetisation comes on a day when Prime Minister Narendra Modi, speaking at a rally in Jhabua, Madhya...

-The Hindu We won’t allow anyone to cut our trees, say the women of Balarampur village For three generations now, and spanning 40 years, Chaturi Sahu, 70, has been unfailingly sending one male member from her family to patrol the nearby Jhinkargadi forest to ensure that its trees and shrubs are untouched. Year after year, her father-in-law, husband and son, who are part of the foot soldiers of Balarampur, a nondescript village in...

-The Hindu Business Line Many regions saw rain deficits; Maharashtra, Karnataka have already declared a drought New Delhi: Even though many States have declared a drought-like situation in some pockets of their respective territories, agricultural input companies are putting up a brave fight saying the situation is not all that bad and hoping it would have little impact on their bottomlines. While the Met department, in its end-of-season report, said the country as...

-Livemint.com A partial hike in the MSP on paper was packaged by the govt as three fresh and historic steps for farmers’ welfare Minimum support price (MSP) is a fiction. It is a feel-good fiction. The farmers are free to sell their crop for as much as they wish, but should the prices fall below a minimum level, the government is there to help them. MSP is a sovereign guarantee that the state...

-The Hindu Business Line Bengaluru/ Ahmedabad: After languishing for almost two years, the prices of pulses such as tur/arhar and urad have rebounded over the past few weeks as production has been impacted by scanty rains in the key growing regions of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. Over the past two-three weeks, the prices of tur, moong, gram and urad have risen by 10-20 per cent in various markets such...