-The Hindu Business Line Whether it is promoting a lease market in land or the use of tractors, credit should be tailored to the needs of marginal players The Finance Minister has announced several measures to make farming competitive and rev up growth in agriculture. While this is welcome, the sector as a whole needs an overhaul to make best use of these measures. To address the needs of landless farmers who are...

-The New Indian Express HYDERABAD: If the unimpressive spell of southwest monsoon across the state continues, the government, which seems proactively making a sustainable crop choice for cultivation by having declared a soil survey, might well want to work towards revival of droughtresistant crop sorghum, which once used to be one of the largest cultivated dryland crops in the region, feel scientists at the Directorate of Sorghum Research. DSR, a central...

-The Asian Age In India and around the world, poverty is predominantly rural. Development agencies often note that 75 per cent of the world's extremely poor people - those who earn less than $1.25 a day - live in rural areas. New figures from the 2014 Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which measures overlapping dimensions of deprivation, show that rural poverty rates are even higher in some regions. In South Asia, the...

-PTI UN body for development of agriculture IFAD today said small-holder farmers should be the starting point for sustainable development. Speaking at the 8th TAAS (Trust for Advancement of Agricultural Sciences) foundation lecture, IFAD President, Kanayo Nwanze said, "... We see time and time again the transformation that occurs when development is sustainable and when local people are involved from the start...Our starting point for sustainable Agricultural development must be small-holder farmers." Nwanze,...

-The Tribune Chandigarh: One of the main reasons for a large number of suicides in the agriculture sector is debt. It is an established fact that Punjab farmers turn to non-institutional sources of credit despite a large network of banks in the state. At least 52.77 per cent rural households in the state are dependent on non-institutional sources for loans, says Dr Satish Verma, Professor, Reserve Bank of India Chair, CRRID. He...