Even as everyone is celebrating the bounce in the economy with a return to 8.5 per cent growth, the jury is out on the accuracy of the agricultural output numbers. The impressive 5.4 per cent agricultural growth rate number is suspect if one looks at recent trends in farm productivity and output. The agriculture ministry anticipates foodgrain output to grow by 6.4 per cent to 232 million tonnes in 2010-11....

Global wheat harvests may trail demand for a second year, spurring hoarding and further price gains, said the United Nations. “Whenever you get the market as tight as we are now, hoarding becomes widespread,” Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, said in an interview by phone from Rome. Wheat, corn and soybeans soared to the highest levels since 2008 yesterday as a U.S. government report showed...

With higher sowing of wheat, pulses, sugarcane, cotton and oilseeds reported this rabi season, there are expectations of a bumper crop production this year. The total food grains output is expected to be 232.07 million tonnes, which is only marginally lower than the record production of 234.47 million tonnes in 2008-09. Announcing the second advance estimates of food grains production for the 2010-11 crop year last week, Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar...

Just over a year since it was crippled by a drought, India’s agriculture sector is firing on all cylinders again, a much-needed turnaround that could keep overall growth high and make fighting inflation easier. The country looks set to reap its second-highest harvest of foodgrains in 2010-11, which includes an estimated 81.47 million tonnes of wheat alone, agriculture minister Sharad Pawar said on Wednesday. Apart from cereals, record output in pulses...

The second advance estimates of crop production for 2010-11 released by Ministry of Agriculture has projected India's foodgrain production at 232.07 million tonnes during 2010-11 compared to 218.11 million tonnes last year. This is only marginally below the record production of 234.47 million tonnes of foodgrains in 2008-09. India is forecasted to achieve record production of wheat (81.47 million tonnes), pulses (16.51 million tonnes) and cotton (339.27 lakh bales of 170...