The Economic Times

Sowing area under wheat has risen 7 per cent to 309.6 lakh hectares while that of pulses is up 11 per cent to 155.35 lakh hectares so far in the ongoing rabi (winter-sown) season on good monsoon and higher support price. However, the acreage of paddy and coarse cereals is lower than last year’s

The Hindu Business Line

After two back-to-back years of drought, India’s rural economy benefited in 2016-17 from a normal monsoon and helped raise demand for boosting the GDP. Demonetisation impacted the agricultural marketing system where payments are largely made in cash by intermediaries, which is then used immediately for purchase of inputs. As access to formal and digital financial systems is limited in rural areas, Budget 2017-18 would need to pay special attention to villages for spurring overall economic growth.

The Indian Express

Maharashtra saw the highest disbursement of agriculture loans in the first half of the current fiscal, according to Lok Sabha papers. The state saw agencies such as commercial banks, regional rural banks and cooperative banks together disburse Rs 1.04 lakh crore of agriculture loans in the first half of 2016-17, said the reply to a question by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. The state accounted for 13.87 per cent of the Rs 7.55 trillion loans in agriculture disbursed all over India by these agencies. Maharashtra was followed by Andhra Pradesh, where Rs 62,693 crore of agri loans were disbursed. In the third position was Punjab with Rs 54,399 crore followed by Rajasthan with Rs 52,230 crore and ...

Yahoo News

Centres decision to stop providing Kisan credit cards to the farmers has affected the farming community in Bengal. This was followed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi further announcing that Rupay debit cards will be issued in place of the Kisan credit cards. A few days back the district magistrates (DMs) of all the districts sent a letter to the state headquarter at Nabanna expressing the difficulties the farmers are facing after the Centre stopped issuing fresh Kisan credit cards.

The Financial Express

The e-platform of National Agriculture Market (eNAM), or digital market place for farmers, which was launched by PM Narendra Modi last year, has made a sluggish start with only 250 mandis in 10 states carrying out online trading within their Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) yard rather than going for intra-state trade. In the absence of reforms to allow inter-state trade, NAM so far achieved little in terms of multiplying the farmers’ choice of buyers.

The Hindu Business Line

It is clear that the projected population growth and urbanisation rates will have dramatic impacts on food security across the world by 2050. The impacts are multi-sectoral and extend well beyond food into infrastructure, healthcare, and technology. However, technology has the potential to re-shape these trends for the benefit of society. Technology is disrupting all areas of agricultural value chain, driving countless opportunities and challenges particularly around profitably feeding the 9.6 billion people on Earth by 2050.

The Times of India

Hundreds of farmers who attended Mati-Tilak Pratigya, a convention organised by BJP for them here on Friday, said demonetisation was a good step for taking on black money but pointed out that they faced severe inconvenience and losses due to unavailability of cash. Farmers told TOI that as they could not withdraw money from banks, they failed to get adequate amount of fertiliser, affecting quality of crop. Many said they were forced to take loans from moneylenders to buy agricultural inputs.

Live mint

The area planted under wheat is over half a million hectares higher than the seasonal area, shows data on the progress of winter sowing released by the agriculture ministry on Friday. So far, farmers have planted 30.96 million hectares under wheat, higher than the normal five-year average area of 30.4 million hectares.