-The Economic Times New Delhi: The Agriculture ministry is targeting record foodgrain output of 283.7 million tonnes in the crop year beginning July, with 140.20 million tonnes targeted for the kharif (summer-sown) crop, on expectation of normal rains during the June-September monsoon season. “The weather office forecast of normal monsoon this year is good news for kharif planting and farmers,” Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh said. He said the government was working...

-The Telegraph Mumbai: Research by the State Bank of India suggests currency notes of higher denominations, especially Rs 2000 notes, are "not getting adequately circulated in the economy" and the tendency to hoard cash may be having a domino effect. An SBI research report tries to provide a theoretical basis for the sudden evaporation of cash in some states by linking the phenomenon to the sharp decline in "income velocity" in the...

-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...

  The total number of farm suicides in the country has reduced from 12,602 to 11,370 between 2015 and 2016 viz. a fall by 9.8 percent. This has been revealed recently in a reply by the Minister of State in the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Shri Parshottam Rupala in the Lok Sabha. So, one may wonder why there is such a hue and cry about rural distress and agrarian crisis...

-The Indian Express The NDA government’s approach towards MGNREGA — the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act — has differed from that of the previous UPA regime in one significant way: There is greater emphasis now in the building of “individual household” assets, as opposed to “community” assets, under the scheme that provides 100 days of guaranteed wage employment annually to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do...