-The Hindu Business Line Given the ballooning costs of storing grain, there is an urgent need to cut down excessive procurement of rice and wheat In 2018-19, wheat procurement at 35.8 million tonnes (mt) was the second highest ever. It is estimated that by the end of kharif marketing season in September, rice procurement may also touch an all-time high of 45 mt. With such high procurement, one of the first difficult...

-VillageSquare.in Income support to smallholder farmers is similar to palliative measures like minimum support prices or loan waivers that do not address the problem of an unsustainable population living on a fixed resource base The government in the budget for this year has announced an allocation of Rs 75,000 crore for direct income transfer of Rs 6,000 annually for every farmer who owns less than 2 hectares of land. This amount...

-The Hindu Jaipur: The Congress government in Rajasthan has accused the Centre of adopting a “discriminatory attitude” towards the State’s farmers, reflected in the lower targets set for procurement of mustard and gram on minimum support prices in comparison with the national average. A ceiling of 25-quintal purchase on a day has been set for the farmers. State Cooperative Minister Udai Lal Anjana has taken up the matter with Union Agriculture Minister Radha...

-The Hindu With a strength of over 83,000, it procures 3.5 lakh litres of milk a day Tirupati: Before Shreeja entered her life, middle-aged Gangamma of Palamaner mandal in Andhra Pradesh’s Chittoor district had to be content with the daily drudgery of maintaining her barn and selling the milk from her cows to a private supplier. And that came with the attendant problems of first realising payments from the buyer, and once...

-The Hindu Three out of five farmers in India grow their crops using rainwater, instead of irrigation. However, per hectare government investment into their lands may be 20 times lower, government procurement of their crops is a fraction of major irrigated land crops, and many of the government’s flagship agriculture schemes are not tailored to benefit them. A new rainfed agriculture atlas released this week not only maps the agro biodiversity and...