-The Hindu Chennai: Even as various agencies push farmers to take up cultivation of pulses, questions about seed availability and procurement are making agriculturists think twice about taking it up. Pulses bring in more profits, take lesser time to grow, require lesser water than paddy and fix nitrogen in the soil, thus reducing the use of fertilizers for the next crop. “Though the price of pulses in the retail market is quite...
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Rainfed farming: A watershed moment -Harish Damodaran
-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...
More »Farmers in parched India village use crowdfunding to build canal -Saritha Rai
-Bloomberg When farmers in the scorched village of Horti in Western India were struggling to raise money for a canal, they turned to an unlikely source: a crowdfunding website called FuelADream. The farmers had never heard of crowdfunding before, but a local non-profit group suggested the site and helped them write a proposal that explained how a canal would help feed local families. Within weeks, they had raised Rs 300,000 ($4,490) from...
More »Govt raises budget for rural jobs scheme by Rs. 5,000 crore -Elizabeth Roche
-Livemint.com Fresh fund infusion means the overall budget allocation for MGNREGS in 2016-17 will be Rs43,500 crore New Delhi: The Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance government has increased the budget for the national rural employment guarantee scheme by Rs.5,000 crore to Rs.43,500 crore for 2016-17, minister of state for rural development Ram Kripal Yadav told Parliament on Monday. The scheme “will not be shut down but strengthened. It is a special direction...
More »A farming that pulsates with higher profitability, productivity
-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...
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