-Hindustan Times A 2001 law protects farmers’ interests. But the seeds bill neutralises many of the enabling measures granted in it There is a draft seeds bill awaiting Parliament, which seeks to replace the old Seed Act of 1966. A law regulating seed production and trade is needed to ensure that farmers are protected against Spurious Seeds, and that seed producers are obliged to put only seeds of good and reliable quality...

-Scroll.in Farmers complain they do not have any support from the state in terms of irrigation or price guarantees for their cash crops. On the morning of June 17, there was an uproar outside the office of Thaneswar Malakar, the deputy commissioner of Assam’s Barpeta district. Some 50-odd rice farmers, under the banner of the farmers’ organisation Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti, shouted slogans and demanded to meet Malakar. The farmers were agitated...

-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...

-Hindustan Times Bathinda: In the wake of losses due to whitefly attack last season, the Punjab agriculture department is facing the possibility of covering less acreage under cotton crop this year. This may result in the department falling short of its target to cover five-lakh hectares under the cotton crop in Malwa region this kharif season. The agriculture department has put everything on stake to revive cotton economy but the lack of...

-The Hindu 13 farmers have ended life till date in 2016 owing to crop failure due to Spurious Seeds Andhra Pradesh: Farmer suicides mount in Adilabad, the opposition Congress has accused Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao of doing a Nero. “Ignoring the severe crisis gripping the farm sector is like Nero fiddling while Rome was burning,” observed District Congress Committee working president Naresh Jadhav, trying to drive home the point. “The enthusiasm shown...