-Deccan Herald Make new entrants provide 40 per cent risk coverage to the farming sector on a household basis. Unseasonal rains and strong winds that lashed the entire north-western region have done immense damage to the standing crops. The Union Ministry of Agriculture has estimated damage to standing crops in 50 lakh hectares in Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra. Coming after an extended...

-PTI Chandigarh: Punjab government on Friday asked the Centre to reconsider its decision of stopping foodgrain procurement by FCI from Punjab, saying it will prove to be "very harmful" for the farming community and could lead to "distress selling". "The Centre's move of stopping procurement of foodgrain from states like Punjab could prove to be very harmful for state growers as they could be denied of appropriate prices of their crop (in...

-Frontline A critique of the report of the high-level committee on restructuring the FCI and reviewing its role by TK Rajalakshmi SOON after assuming power at the Centre, Narendra Modi's National Democratic Alliance government set up a high-level committee on re-structuring the Food Corporation of India that was mandated to make the food management system more efficient. It was headed by Shanta Kumar, former Union Minister for Rural Development and former Chief...

-The Hindu Business Line Though migration of labour from the east has helped revive the plantations in southern India, questions remain on the long-term implications, Vishwanath Kulkarni reports As the harvest season starts in Coorg, Karnataka, coffee planter MC Kariappa has a lot of issues to contend with - productivity, weather and, the biggest worry of all in recent times, paucity of labourers. So when a dozen labourers from Assam landed at...

-The Indian Express After petrol and diesel, the Narendra Modi government is looking next to deregulate urea. In the works is a three-year plan to decontrol the maximum retail price (MRP) of this fertiliser - currently fixed at Rs 5,360 a tonne or Rs 268 per 50-kg bag - alongside permitting duty-free imports sans any canalisation or restrictions, and credit the subsidy directly into the bank accounts of farmers. Urea imports now...