-Hindustan Times The agriculture ministry has started a new programme to focus on millets or coarse cereal production, mostly grown by small and poor farmers New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government has decided to include millets in the public distribution system for which it is procuring these grains at federally fixed minimum support prices, agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh said. The agriculture ministry has started a new programme to focus on millets or...

-TheWire.in Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won’t materialize. On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the last such policy. The draft appears to be an attempt to shift the approach towards forestry in India – specifically, from a local community- and ecology-centric approach emphasised in the...

-The Hindu Farming must be treated as a market-based enterprise and made viable on its own terms The week-long farmers’ march which reached Mumbai earlier this month, on the anniversary of Gandhi’s Dandi March of 1930, was unprecedented in many ways. It was mostly silent and disciplined, mostly leaderless, non-disruptive and non-violent, and well organised. It received the sympathy of middle class city dwellers, food and water from bystanders, free medical services...

-ThePrint.in Renowned agricultural economist Sardara Singh Johl takes on father of green revolution M.S. Swaminathan’s idea of raising MSP to 1.5 times the production costs. New Delhi: Renowned agricultural economist Sardara Singh Johl agrees with M.S. Swaminathan, the man credited as the father of the ‘green revolution’, on the futility of loan waivers to ease farm distress. But he disagrees with a much-touted recommendation of the committee on tackling the farm crisis Swaminathan...

  A national-level public hearing, which was organized at the Gandhi Peace Foundation (Delhi) on 15th March, 2018, has revealed that the intended beneficiaries of various entitlement-based welfare schemes and programmes of the Central government are witnessing difficulties and impediments in accessing the benefits and services. During the public hearing, which was organized by the Right to Food Campaign along with partnering grassroots-level organizations, poor and marginalized citizens from across 14 states...