-The Indian Express Govt plans to change existing law to ensure availability of quality seeds to farmers. How will the proposed Bill to replace The Seeds Act, 1966 meet its objective of ‘regulating quality of seeds for sale, import, export’? The existing 1966 law already provides for regulation of the quality of seeds. What does the new Bill seek to change? The current Act only covers “notified kinds or varieties of seeds”. Thus,...
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India's GDP growth slips to 4.5%, slowest in more than six years
-The Indian Express The GDP growth rate has now slowed for the sixth consecutive quarter with the previous low recorded at 4.3 per cent in March 2013. Owing to a deceleration in manufacturing output and subdued Farm Sector activity, India’s GDP growth slipped to a 26-quarter low of 4.5 per cent in the second quarter (July-September) of the current fiscal, data released by National Statistical Office (NSO) Friday showed. The GDP...
More »Give farmers their due credit -Ashok Gulati & Ritika Juneja
-The Indian Express All crop loans should be routed through Kisan Credit Cards. This will ensure that farmers do not use the loans for non-agricultural purposes. Normally, a sector’s credit off-take is a sign of its health. Higher the off-take, the better the sector’s performance. There has been a healthy off-take of ground-level credit (GLC) in agriculture and allied sectors. In the financial year (FY) 2018-19, banks disbursed Rs 12.55 trillion...
More »Crop insurance flaws fuel farm distress -Sayantan Bera
-Livemint.com * At a time when rural incomes are sliding, the only existing safety net for the farmer is failing * High costs of reinsurance due to erratic weather, a spike in claims, political interference in crop loss estimation are reasons that forced some insurers to leave the business NEW DELHI: Santosh Kumar’s first brush with insurance left a bitter aftertaste. A farmer’s son, 26-year-old Kumar from Bihar’s Araria district felt betrayed when...
More »RCEP's threat to agriculture staved off, but that does not solve the sector's problems -Siraj Hussain
-TheWire.in In the last five years, India’s exports of agricultural commodities have gone down from $43.25 billion in FY 2014 to $39.20 billion in FY’2019. The run-up to the RCEP leader summit in Bangkok last week was truly amazing. While farmers and trade union activists from both the Left and Right were opposed to India signing the RCEP, the government seemed to be in two minds. Indeed, senior ministers were reluctant...
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