-The Economic Times Agricultural straw is mostly used as fodder for cattle or for making cardboard in areas where farmers harvest their crop by hand. New Delhi: Government think-tank Niti Aayog will soon come out with a policy roadmap to promote alternative use of crop residue, which farmers continue to burn in the fields despite a ban in some states to curb air pollution. The advisory body has floated an expression of...

  The budgetary allocation for Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) as a proportion of total budgetary expenditure has been reduced marginally during the Interim Budget 2019-20. It may have happened because the coverage of gross cropped area under the scheme could not keep pace with the target that was set during the last two years. The Status of Implementation of Budget Announcements 2017-18, which was presented during the Union Budget 2018-19,...

-The Hindu Three out of five farmers in India grow their crops using rainwater, instead of irrigation. However, per hectare government investment into their lands may be 20 times lower, government procurement of their crops is a fraction of major irrigated land crops, and many of the government’s flagship agriculture schemes are not tailored to benefit them. A new rainfed agriculture atlas released this week not only maps the agro biodiversity and...

-Financial Express With elections approaching, every party is swearing by farmers and trying to woo them for their votes. The Modi government has already announced a package of Rs 75,000 crore for about 12.6 crore small and marginal farmers. While in absolute terms it looks sizeable, when it is divided by the number of farm families to be covered, it is miniscule—just `6,000 per family per year, which is about 6%...

-The Hindu Business Line Need to do more R&D in rainfed agriculture and bring in more policy perspective: Ashok Dalwai Even though rainfed agriculture contributes to 60 per cent of the value of agriculture GDP of India, there is a clear-cut bias towards irrigated areas when it comes to public investment in agriculture in the country. This neglect, together with unsuitable programme design, has ensured that potential of rain-fed areas remains unrealised, a...