Agriculture Industry
Foodgrain bonanza for Telangana this yearedit
The 2016-17 agriculture season is likely to go down into record books as the year of hope and turnaround for Telangana as the production of foodgrain, including cereals and millets, is expected to increase by a whopping 76%, thanks to good south-west monsoon.
News in Numbers | Centre may reimpose 10% import duty on wheat to aid farmersedit
Wheat was seeing large overseas purchases as an import duty was scrapped in December, 2016. The reintroduction is being seen as a move to aid Indian farmers as they ready to harvest their crop this season. Biscuit manufacturers and flour millers were resorting to imports going into millions of kilo to meet a shortfall after two years of drought. Wheat import in FY17, till December, increased by 60% over the whole of FY16 in volume.
Adopt location specific farming to double farmer’s income: ICARedit
Indian Council Agriculture Research emphasized the need of adopting location specific farming approaches for doubling farmer’s income in the northeastern states with particular reference to Assam. “Additional 5-6 million tonnes of food-grains are needed in the next few decades to feed the population of region and Assam will have to play a pivotal role for the same,” ICAR for North Eastern Hill Region, Director Dr. S.V. Ngachan said. Ngachan was speaking at exposure cum training programme for the senior officials of NABARD (National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development) Assam, on ‘‘improved farming practices for enhancing productivity and income of farmers.”
Sustainable Agriculture: Punjab’s search for a less water-guzzling, yet high-yielding paddyedit
A new variety maturing within 125 days, yet yielding nearly as much as those now grown over 135-160 days, could provide the ultimate solution to Punjab’s woes stemming from farming of water-guzzling paddy. Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) has released a paddy variety PR-126 that gives an average of 30 quintals per acre. This is only marginally below the 30.5 quintals from PR-121 and PR-124 or the 32 quintals of the other popular variety Pusa-44.
Beyond the farmedit
We stand at a critical point in India’s economic history, when jobs finally appear to have started shifting away from agriculture. During the past few decades, even as policymakers celebrated a decline in the share of agriculture in jobs, the number of workers in agriculture was still rising as the population was growing; it grew from 10 crore in 1951 to 26 crore in the 2011 census.
Kharif-16 proves bountiful for Fasal Bima Yojana insurersedit
A normal monsoon in the Kharif 2016 season has resulted in lower claims under the Centre’s flagship scheme — Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana — keeping insurance companies happy. The provisional figures from Maharashtra, which accounted for a fourth of the total premium collected under the scheme, is testimony to this.
How India’s public policy can take maximum advantage of AIedit
AI, the report states, can also be consumed in traditional industries like agriculture. The department of agriculture cooperation and farmers welfare, ministry of agriculture runs the Kisan Call Centres across the country to respond to issues raised by farmers instantly and in their local language.
Government’s focus on agriculture to give farm & firm a boostedit
If the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent pronouncements and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s budget are any indication, agriculture and allied industries in India are set to see the much-awaited turnaround. The fact that ‘farmers’ and ‘rural development’ figured in the key focus areas of the Union Budget and the allocation for these sectors (Rs 1.87 trillion) is up by 24 percent is good news. The slew of new schemes, including the model law for contract farming that the government plans to bring in, is also an indicator of the government’s resolve to revitalise the rural economy. The new law is likely to fetch farmers a better price for their produce and be a win-win for both farmers ...
Technology in Agriculture
UP bans farm machines that leave stubble for burningedit
To prevent a situation similar to the smog crisis in Delhi caused by burning of stubble in fields of Punjab, Haryana and western UP, state cabinet minister for agriculture Surya Pratap Shahi has imposed with immediate effect ban on combined harvesters for wheat crops that leaves the stubble that eventually gets burned and pollutes the air. Farmers have been given three months to install reapers in their harvesting machines, failing which they could face punitive action.