Reuters Unseasonal rains and hailstorms have damaged ripening, winter-planted crops such as wheat in India's fertile northern, central and western plains, exposing thousands of farmers to losses and raising the risk of further food price inflation. Torrential rains on Sunday and Monday lashed Punjab, Haryana parts of Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh state, which account for the bulk of wheat output in India, the world's biggest producer after China, flattening crops and...

CNBC TV18 The Centre has allowed an early procurement of wheat procurement by states to avert the possibility of any distress sale by farmers. Despite the pre-monsoon rains increasing moisture content in the rabi crop, government sources have maintained that the procurement cycle is on track and there hasn't been any adverse climatic impact on wheat harvest or supply so far. While government sources indicated that wheat procurement in Madhya Pradesh will...

The government has fixed a wheat procurement target of 34.15 million tonnes for the 2023-24 marketing year starting April, higher than 18.79 million tonnes purchased in the previous year. The target was fixed in the meeting of state food secretaries held alongside state food ministers’ conference here to discuss procurement arrangements.  Out of the total wheat procurement target for the 2022-23 marketing year (April-March), Punjab will aim to procure 2.5 million...

The year 2022 was supposed to mark the recovery of the Indian economy from the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns of the preceding two years. However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February pushed up prices of food, fuel and fertilizer worldwide. In India consumer price inflation, which had declined to under 5 percent in the September-November period of 2021, has steadily increased, staying above 6 percent throughout 2022.    What happened to rural incomes in 2022? An...

Food inflation rose sharply to 6.19% in January from 4.58% in December, led by rising prices of most segments Livemint.com The union government on Wednesday sold 385,000 tonnes of wheat worth ₹901 crore in the open market, in the second round of a planned auction of three million tonnes it plans to offload from the central pool to counter rising prices of the key foodgrain. The move assumes significance as India’s retail inflation...