-The Times of India KANNUR: Kerala has lost huge expanses of paddy fields in the past few decades and we have just around 2.75 lakh hectares of paddy field left in the state compared to over nine lakh hectares thirty years back thus resulting in major reduction in paddy production, according to experts. "Though we require over 40 lakh tonnes of rice per year today, our production is just six lakh tonnes...
More »SEARCH RESULT
States Need to Initiate Reforms in APMC Act
-Press Information Bureau (Ministry of Agriculture) The Government formulated a Model Act on Agri-Marketing reform in 2003 and Model Rules in 2007. The Government has since been pursuing the State Governments to adopt the Model Act and Rules. The Model Act inter-alia provides for alternative models through which farmers can access larger markets viz. setting up of markets in private and cooperative, contract farming, farmer consumer market and direct marketing. License...
More »Checking a claim
-The Business Standard Making the Agriculture growth story sustainable Finance Minister P Chidambaram's claim in his interim Budget speech of "stellar performance" of the Agriculture sector is based on numbers, though it needs to be analysed from different perspectives to get a true picture. There is no doubt that agricultural gross domestic product may grow by 4.6 per cent this year. The past 10 years' average, too, may work out close to...
More »Only 24 cases of diversion of subsidized urea since 2010: Govt -Dipak Kumar Dash
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Fertilizer minister Srikant Jena may keep claiming that annually 30 lakh tonne of highly subsidized urea for Agriculture is being smuggled to chemical factories, but the government says states have reported only 24 such cases since 2010-11. Jena had recently said at a conference of Indian Fertilizer Association (IFA) that there are serious signs of mismanagement in an information technology-driven era when targeted farmers can be...
More »PM-headed panels hardly ever met, says RTI query -Sandeep Pai
-The Hindustan Times Several important councils and committees formed and headed by Prime Minister (PM) Manmohan Singh have either not met even once or only rarely, according to a Right to Information (RTI) reply procured by HT from the Prime Minister's office (PMO). Important committees on nutrition, skill development, climate change, and micro, small, medium enterprises (MSME) - all under the PM's stewardship - haven't met for years, says the RTI query. Interestingly,...
More »