-The Hindu Managers of around 3,000 privately-run markets are to meet and protest new rules that ban sale of animals for slaughter at cattle markets Fridays are festive days at Pachokhara. For nearly half-a-century now, farmers, cattle-rearers and tradesmen have made the weekly trip to the cricket stadium-sized grounds of the Upadhyay family— prominent local land-owners — to trade cattle. A dirt road splits the ground into a section for buffaloes and another for...

-The Economic Times MUMBAI: What has made the Maharashtra farmer hit the streets, dump his produce and even attack suppliers? A combination of weather, unscrupulous middlemen and lack of discretion on crop seems to have wreaked havoc on their lives. Rainfall in Maharashtra has been deficient in 2011 and the situation turned worse leading to a severe drought till 2015. In 2016, farmers got relief with normal rains, when they got back...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A robust farm growth of 5.2 per cent in the March quarter pushed GDP growth up to 7.1 per cent. However, growth in the sector was lower than the previous quarter's expansion of 6.9 per cent. Farm growth for the full fiscal zoomed to 4.9 per cent because of good rainfall and record food-grain production compared with a near flat 0.7 per cent expansion in 2015-16.   "The third...

-The Pioneer While the Government has done its bit to boost the output of pulses, it has done little to check the nexus between politicians and grain traders For several decades, production of pulses in India has fallen substantially short in terms of consumption. This persistent deficit has led to intermittent bouts of spike in prices as imports (needed to plug it) have often come after lag and have failed to reach...

Much to our surprise, a careful relook at the newly released estimates on farm production from the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare would reveal that the foodgrain production during the rabi season is likely to fall by almost 1 million tonne between 2013-14 and 2016-17. Please see chart-1. Amidst the celebration of a bumper harvest in the ongoing crop year, it needs to be explained why the rabi foodgrain output...