-The Hindu Narendra Modi has announced a 21-day lockdown starting from midnight tonight as a major step in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. During the “containment” period of 21 days from March 25, 2020, the following services Will remain open: * Shops, including ration shops, dealing with food, groceries, fruits and vegetables, dairy and milk booths, meat and fish, animal Fodder. District authorities to encourage home delivery to minimise individual movement. * Banks, insurance offices and...

-PTI Statistics for female farmer suicides are "complete rubbish" as the discussion on women victims of agrarian crisis often becomes a discussion of their role as widows of male farmers, he said. New Delhi: Tens of thousands of women get excluded from the farmer suicides data in the country just because they are never considered as farmers, senior journalist-cum-agriculture expert P Sainath said on Friday. Delivering his valedictorian address at the XVI National...

-ThePrint.in Stakeholders ask Modi govt to import milk & milk products to create buffer stock. This would make India a net importer for the first time since 2011-12. New Delhi: A shortage of Fodder and a resultant decline in milk production and procurement has meant that prices of the essential item could increase by Rs 8-10 in the summer. Citing this dairy shortage, multiple milk federations and the Indian Ice-Cream Manufacturers’ Association (IICMA)...

-The Hindu Border districts most affected; authorities caught napping despite FAO warning. Ahmedabad: Sharing borders with neighbouring Pakistan, Gujarat is under attack from hoppers — new-born locusts — that have flown in across the international border. As the swarms mature, they have ravaged farms in North Gujarat, devastating farmers in the three border districts Banaskantha, Patan and Kutch. The locusts, known as tiddis locally, have wreaked havoc on standing crops of castor, cumin,...

-The Indian Express India can learn three lessons from China — investing more in agri-R&D and innovations, improving incentives for farmers by carrying out agri-marketing reforms, and collapsing input subsidies into direct income support on per hectare basis. India and China, the world’s most populous countries, have limited arable land — China has about 120 million hectares (mha) and India 156 mha. The challenge before the two countries is to produce...