-Frontline The inability to resolve pressing problems with respect to the production, distribution and availability of food is one of the important failures of the entire economic reform process. IN the fateful month of July 1991, when the devaluation of the Indian rupee presaged the introduction of a whole series of liberalising economic reforms, agriculture was very far from the minds of most policymakers and commentators. The immediate focus was on...

-The Hindu Business Line Bengaluru: Pulses such as tur (arhar), urad, moong, and oilseeds — mainly groundnut and sunflower — and maize have turned out to be the hot favourites of farmers, who have brought a larger area under these crops in the ongoing kharif planting season. The prevailing high prices, coupled with an increase in the support price and bonus incentive announced by the Centre, is the main reason farmers in...

-Hindustan Times Bathinda: That pest whitefly is back. At least 4,400 hectares of the 36,000-hectare cotton area in Punjab’s border belt of Fazilka is under its invasion . The Centre will remain in touch with the state government to protect the crop in the remaining season. The next 45 days are critical, so the Union Ministry of Agriculture will keep the fibre crop under its eyes throughout. On Saturday, its three-member expert...

-The Hindu Business Line Agriculture Ministry expects record harvest this year New Delhi: With the monsoon covering the entire country this week, sowing of kharif crops till July 15, at 559.76 lakh hectares (lh), surpassed last year’s acreage of 548.38 lh as farmers planted more rice, pulses, coarse cereals, oilseeds and sugarcane. Cotton was the only crop that witnessed a drop in acreage, at 75.41 lh in the June to July 15 period...

-The Indian Express Agriculture Ministry’s harvest estimates don’t square with drought conditions in several cases, raise serious questions of credibility. We have had two consecutive drought years, yet India’s milk production, according to the Agriculture Ministry, has risen from 137.69 million tonnes (mt) in 2013-14 to 146.31 mt in 2014-15 and 160.35 mt in 2015-16. Never before has the country’s milk output grown at these rates — that too, in the face...