The Hindu

Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK), a frontline agriculture extension centre, has organised a training programme on making value-added products from millets for farmers under the ‘entrepreneurship development programme’. After N. Sathiah, Professor and Head of Coastal Saline Research Centre and KVK explained the objectives of the programme to farmers, who aspired to set up micro level business units, S. Arokiya Mary, Assistant professor, enlightened them on the variety of products that could be made from millets at KVK here on Tuesday.

The Times of India

State consumer affairs minister Saryu Roy on Tuesday said the government has set a target of procuring four lakh tonnes of paddy this kharif year. He said two lakh tonnes of paddy has already been purchased. “The state has saved Rs 700 crore in different schemes and programmes of the department,” he added.

The Hindu

Director for Agriculture K. Dhanunjaya Reddy has said that summer pulses programme is going to be launched by the Department of Agriculture to meet the growing demand. He took part in a workshop on the programme here on Tuesday in which a large number of farmers from six districts participated.

The Hindu Business Line

The Survey has pegged the growth in agriculture and allied sector for the current year at 4.1 per cent, up from 1.2 per cent in the previous year. “The higher growth in agriculture sector is not surprising as the monsoon rains were much better in the current year than the previous two years,” the Survey said. The country witnessed a near-normal monsoon across various parts in 2016, except Southern Peninsula, after consecutive drought years.

Morung Express

Only an overhaul of India’s farming policy, including addressing the small size of agricultural holdings, will help to stem the epidemic of suicides among farmers that have devastated rural communities, campaigners say. Last week, the Supreme Court asked why India’s states and the central bank have no policies to prevent suicides among farmers. It asked the government and the Reserve Bank of India to respond within a month.

The Times of India

The farm credit target is likely to be raised by a whopping Rs 1 lakh crore to Rs 10 lakh crore in Budget 2017-18 in order to increase credit flow in the agriculture sector. According to sources, the government may increase the agriculture credit target to Rs 10 lakh crore for 2017-18 fiscal from the existing Rs 9 lakh crore.

Hindustan Times

A day before the union budget, President Pranab Mukherjee’s economic survey tried to address issues largely related to the poor, oppressed, needy, youth and the farmers. He drew a parallel to the Champaran Movement of pre-independence, which marked the rise of the indigo farmers against the British colonial government. He compared it to the poor’s struggle against black money.

The Hindu

The Jai Kisan Andolan of Swaraj Abhiyan and other farmers’ organisations on Monday came together to discuss the concerns and issues of farmers in India. Demanding that the Budget should focus on farmers, Swaraj Abhiyan has decided to hold a ‘Kisan Sansad’ (Farmers’ Parliament), parallel to the presentation of the Union Budget, at Jantar Mantar.

First Post

The agriculture sector in India employs more than 90 million people and contributes 15.4 percent gross value addition (GVA) to the Indian economy. Agriculture has been one of the key focus areas during successive Union Budgets. The performance of the agriculture sector has remained inconsistent due to low productivity that is driven by lack of access to basic inputs as well as macro-environment issues like drought, flood, etc. This is accentuated in the poor socio-economic condition of the farmers. It is a sad state of affairs for India having an average of more than 5,000 farmers committing suicide in a year (NCRB statistics). This reflects upon the gap between policy making and implementation.

The Hindu Business Line

The release of the celebrated report ‘Poverty, Unemployment and Development Policy: A Case Study of Selected Issues with Special Reference to Kerala’ by the Centre for Development Studies in 1975 heralded a wider debate on the multifaceted dimensions of the “Kerala Model” of development. One of the lingering dilemmas of the debate has been the staggered performance of the State’s agricultural sector over time. The dwindling status of the agricultural sector is evident from its declining share in the State’s GSDP from more than 52 per cent in 1960-61 to around 11 per cent in 2014-15.

Reuters

Global investments in agriculture technology startups fell 30 percent in 2016 as investor interest in companies offering drones and satellite-guided farm machines cooled following the biggest capital inflow ever a year earlier, according to a study released on Tuesday. Still, the number of deals grew 10 percent from 2015 to a record 580, and the $3.23 billion invested by venture capitalists and others was the second highest annual total on record for the sector, according to the annual report from food and agriculture investment platform AgFunder.