-Deccan Chronicle The slogan was that there would never again be scarcity of food because we can now make “bread from air”. There are two distinct futures of food and farming. One leads to a dead end. A dead planet: poisons and chemical monocultures spreading; farmers committing suicide due to debt for seeds and chemicals; children dying due to lack of food; people dying because of chronic diseases spreading due to nutritionally empty, toxic...

-The New Indian Express BHAWANIPATNA: Cotton will be raised on 55,000 hectares (ha) of land in the current kharif season across Kalahandi, one of the major cotton growing districts in the State. With weather being conducive, sowing of cotton seeds has been completed on 45,550 ha and by next week, coverage will exceed the targeted area, said agriculture officials. Each hectare gives a yield of eight to 10 quintals. Kalahandi district contributes...

-The Hindu Business Line Varied production costs, low-grade produce, limited surplus are key factors Farmers across many States, including Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, are up in arms demanding implementation of the National Commission on Farmers report, which suggested fixing the minimum support price (MSP) for crops 50 per cent above the cost of production. But the MSP of many crops already has a built-in profit margin of 40-50 per cent. So, what is...

-PTI New Delhi: Just a couple of hours before the Goods and Services Tax (GST) roll out, the all-powerful GST Council tonight reduced the tax rate on fertiliser to 5 per cent from previously decided 12 per cent. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who heads the GST Council comprising representatives of states, said the decision to reduce the tax rate on fertiliser was taken because of apprehensions that price of the crop nutrient...

-The Indian Express First, it was demonetisation and crop price crash; now it is the collapse of cooperative credit that is hurting farmers during peak kharif operations. For most Maharashtra farmers, drying up of institutional finance for kharif farming operations is what’s really hurting. Nashik (Maharashtra): Last kharif, the Nashik District Central Cooperative Bank (NDCCB) disbursed  Rs 1,608.55 crore of crop loans during April-June, exceeding its target of Rs 1,257.18 crore. This...