-The Indian Express Curbing stubble burning is about inducing behavioural changes in farmers. Given that crop residue burning has an environmental footprint and poses health hazards, one needs to be cautious while evaluating the Centre’s policy to mitigate the crisis. But there is also an urgent need for such an evaluation. The Centre has allocated Rs 1,050 crore to the states where crop residue burning poses a pollution hazard. The Union Ministry...

-Down to Earth The Centre's discussions on boosting the goat sector to double farmers’ incomes may be futile if fodder and grazing lands, both diminishing, are not ensured Since goats were domesticated 10,000 years ago, they have been poor people’s most reliable livelihood insurance. In India, goats are the most reliable source of earning a living in ecologically degraded areas. The reason: a goat has everything a poor or a person...

-Livemint.com Rainfall will be 97% of the 50-year average with a 54% probability that rains will be normal to above normal, IMD said in its first stage, long-range monsoon forecast New Delhi: Rainfall is likely to be normal during the June-to-September southwest monsoon season, the government’s weather office said on Monday. “For the third consecutive year, India will have a normal monsoon. There is very less probability of experiencing a deficit monsoon. We...

-The Indian Express Raising agricultural exports requires the government to unburden policy of consumer bias. A balance should be struck between meeting the needs of food-insecure consumers and income-insecure farmers. The Agriculture Minister, Radha Mohan Singh, recently tweeted about the government’s resolve to increase the value of the country’s agricultural exports to $100 billion by 2022-23. The Dalwai Committee Report on doubling farmers’ incomes also talked of a similar target. It said,...

-The Hindu Farmers’ protests interrogate the reigning development model.   Alternatives do exist The recent spate of peasant protests across wide swathes of the country points sharply to the unjust folly and sheer unviability of the path of development that India has embraced, especially in the reform era since the late 1980s. Even, say, a modest food critic in metropolitan India collects an immodest annual pay package which can easily go into seven figures....