-ThePrint.in The paddy being grown in Punjab is alien to conditions in Punjab, and the burning of its stubble has had a big impact on the state’s air quality. Punjab is an agrarian state with predominant wheat-paddy cropping cycle. During the kharif season every year, paddy is grown in standing water on about 2.9 million hectares of land. This paddy crop, taken up by Punjab Farmers in the early 1980s, is alien to...

-The Times of India NAGPUR: Multiple cropping (growing many crops simultaneously), and intercropping (growing different crops between rows of a single crop) can completely do away with the problem of pest attacks, and help minimize or eliminate use of pesticides. Ignoring this well known fact, agriculture department as well as Farmers have resorted to extreme and unscientific use of pesticides, raising costs for Farmers, and even leading to farm labour deaths...

-The Telegraph Bhubaneswar: An Assembly committee will seek a fresh appointment with Prime Minister Narendra Modi to consider Odisha's demand to increase the minimum support price for paddy. The decision to meet Modi was taken on Friday at a House committee meeting presided over by Speaker Pradeep Amat. The committee had approached the Prime Minister's Office twice this year, but without any success. Leader of the Opposition Narasingh Mishra said: "The Speaker will write...

-Hindustan Times The design of large injections of public funds for India’s agriculture economy needs to be informed with rigorous evaluations on what is effective for higher farm productivity. A wage subsidy for farm-labour is one modification that needs an evaluation, to generate evidence to inform how the MGNREGA policy generates employment when there is need, but without stress to farm production Indian agriculture is witnessing a period of complex socio-economic distress,...

-Livemint.com Tractor sales have gone up in a year which has seen Farmer protests in several states for remunerative crop prices and farm loan waivers, amid lingering effects of demonetisation and GST implementation New Delhi: Domestic tractor sales rose to a record in the first half of the fiscal year, but economists are hesitating to interpret it as a sign that the farm economy has finally turned the corner. Tractor manufacturers sold 363,071...