-The Economic Times Politicians in India firmly believe that the woes of farmers can be solved with freebies: free electricity, free water, farm loan waivers, fertilisers and seed subsidies, minimum support prices, etc. Little attention is paid to what really ails Indian agriculture: low productivity. From rice to wheat to coarse grains and Pulses, from cash crops to food crops, Indian agriculture is punctured with very low productivity. Let's start with rice....
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Farmers not getting MSP, says Agriculture Minister
-PTI Consultations on with States, NITI Aayog to increase the income of farmers New Delhi: Farmers are not getting the mimimum support price (MSP) for their crops, and efforts are being made so that they get the right remuneration, Radha Mohan Singh, Agriculture Minister, said on Friday. During Question Hour in the Rajya Sabha, Singh said that from his experience he felt that farmers often did not get the price settled as the...
More »What to expect in 2018 from the farm sector: prices could hold key to several political fortunes -Harish Damodaran & Parthasarathi Biswas
-The Indian Express Agricultural prices crashed in April-June, just when a bumper rabi crop had been harvested after two years of drought, and despite demonetisation. 2017 was agriculture’s annus horribilis. The reason wasn’t monsoon failure (as in 2014 and 2015) or unseasonal rain and hail (as in March 2015); the year was, in fact, largely free of extreme weather events, resulting in a record output of wheat, Pulses, cotton, potato and a...
More »Civil society activists allege another hunger death in Jharkhand due to failure of aadhaar-based biometric authentication
-Press note from Right to Food Campaign, Jharkhand Etwariya Devi, a 67-year-old widow, died of hunger and exhaustion on 25 December in Sonpurwa village of Majhiaon block of Garhwa district (Jharkhand). She lived with her son Ghura Vishwakarma, daughter-in-law Usha Devi and their three children in a dilapidated kutcha house. The family has a hand-to-mouth existence and is routinely unable to access adequate nutrition. Surviving the day on only a meal...
More »Proposed scheme to address agrarian distress is impractical and does not touch on systemic issues -Roshan Kishore
-Hindustan Times The Indian farmer needs to sell his produce with as little intermediation as possible in order to make decent profits. One of the biggest roadblocks for this to happen is lack of mass demand for the majority of farm produce Faced with the spectre of rural anti-incumbency after the Gujarat results, the Modi government is in firefighting mode. Reportedly, a scheme is being planned to provide partial support to state...
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