Media Monitor
Agriculture Industry
Zero interest crop loan to Arunachal farmersedit
In a major move, the Arunachal Pradesh Government has decided to provide zero interest crop loan to farmers of the State to enable them easy access to credit through banking channels. A ‘notification’ from Finance department said that the Government has decided to launch Chief Minister’s Krishi Rinn Yojana under which the State Government would provide interest subvention of 4 per cent on crop loan/Kisan credit card limit upto Rs 3 lakh sanctioned by all banks to all farmers of the State during the current financial year.
TS AEOs to go digital for better farmingedit
Hyderabad: Agriculture Extension Officers (AEOs) in the State will now be using digital gadgets to guide farmers adopt advanced farming techniques and help them get government benefits. Minister for Agriculture Pocharam Srinivas Reddy on Monday handed over a Samsung Tablet and a finger scanner marking the formal launch of digital conversion of field data.
Maharashtra Farmers To Begin ‘Strike’ From June 1edit
The farmers’ demands include loan waiver, free electricity, appropriate price for their produce, grant for irrigation and higher price for milk. The agitation will not involve any political party or leaders, Mr Dhorde said. “Once the strike begins, farmers have decided to produce only for their own consumption and not for the market. They also plan to stop supply of food grains, cereals, fruits and milk to markets,” he said.
Greenpeace lauds Bihar’s organic farming initiativesedit
Greenpeace India, the environment protection organisation, has welcomed and lauded the Bihar government’s decision to give priority to organic farming. “This initiative will prove sustainable for the agriculture and food security in the long run,” a Greenpeace official said here on Monday.
Agriculture Minister denies any move for loan waiver for farmersedit
Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh on Monday denied any possibility of a loan waiver for farmers, saying the NDA government’s focus lay in their empowerment and it instead intended to invest in various schemes and initiatives to boost their income. “Our focus is on empowerment of farmers. We want agricultural production to increase and maintenance to go down. We are investing in schemes that are aimed at increasing farmers’ income,” he said while briefing media about achievements of his ministry in last three years. Singh said that loan waivers cannot solve farmers’ problems, so the government’s focus was on bringing down input cost of farming and providing facilities to farmers.
Agri minister gets additional charge as Paswan goes abroad for treatmentedit
Agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh was given additional charge of ministry of consumer affairs, food and public distribution on Monday as incumbent Ram Vilas Paswan left for a foreign location for treatment. Singh will handle these ministries “till such time Paswan is able to resume his work as the minister of consumer affairs, food & public distribution,” said a Rashtrapati Bhavan communiqué. President Pranab Mukherjee also directed that Paswan “shall be designated as a minister without portfolio during the period of his indisposition or till such time he is able to resume his work”. Mukherjee made the announcement after being advised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
‘Record foodgrain output likely next year’edit
Food grain output is likely to touch a new record in the 2017-18 crop year to begin from July, on hopes of normal monsoon for the second straight year, Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh said on Monday. Foodgrain production is estimated to be all-time high at 273.38 million tonnes (MT) in the current 2016-17 crop year (July-June) on account of good rains after two years of drought, as against 251.57 MT last year
Ammonia-Urea plants of Zuari Agro Chemicals to be revampededit
Zuari Agro Chemicals is up by 0.6% at Rs 413.80 per share at 12:11 hours IST on BSE. It hit a high of Rs 422 and a low of Rs 404.20 so far during the day. The market capitalisation of the company is Rs 1734.89 crore. Zuari Agro Chemicals Limited is engaged in the manufacture, sale and trading of fertilisers and seeds.
Scientists crack tur dal code to enhance varieties, yieldsedit
The School of Agriculture and Environment and Institute of Agriculture (the University of Western Australia), Shenzhen Millennium Genomics (China), Institute of Biotechnology at Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University (Hyderabad), Agricultural Research Station (University of Agricultural Sciences, Karnataka), Visva-Bharati (Shantiniketan) and ICRISAT (Hyderabad) took part in the research. “This breakthrough will help us better understand the grain’s quality traits and unlock the huge potential of this crop and allow farmers access to high-value markets,” ICRISAT Director-General David Bergvinson said.
Clariant to buy Huntsman for $6.4 billion as chemical M&A deals surgeedit
Clariant AG agreed to buy Huntsman Corp. for about $6.4 billion in stock, cementing a deal that had developed over several years and extending a record run of consolidation in the global chemicals industry. “The combined company should have higher margins, a more specialty-chemical oriented earnings profile and lower financial leverage,” James Sheehan, an analyst at Suntrust Robinson Humphrey Inc., said in a note on Monday. A Swiss base also provides $25 million of annual tax benefits, he said. (Monsanto)
‘Pigeonpea DNA re-sequencing will lead to superior varieties’edit
The nine collaborating institutes are the School of Agriculture and Environment and Institute of Agriculture, The University of Western Australia; Shenzhen Millennium Genomics Inc., China; Macrogen Inc., Seoul, Republic of Korea; Institute of Biotechnology at Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University (PJTSAU), Hyderabad; Agricultural Research Station–Gulbarga at University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS), Karnataka; the Department of Plant Sciences at University of California–Davis, U.S.A.; Biological Sciences and International Center for Tropical Botany, Florida International University, Miami, U.S.A.; Visva-Bharati, Shantiniketan, and ICRISAT.
Dr Harsh Vardhan takes charge of environment ministry after demise of Anil Daveedit
Dave was to take the final call on the approval of GM mustard. The Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), a body of the ministry that evaluates genetically modified crops, had on May 11 recommended the commercial use of GM mustard. It was then left to the environment minister to take a final call on the issue.
Thunderstorms will hurt groundnut, bajra crops’edit
Former agriculture officer B M Vaghela said the summer groundnut and bajra crops will be in the fields in areas where the sowing was relatively late. These unseasonal rains will affect the crop quality as the water will adversely affect the flowering of these crops. He further said that the farmers who want to sow BT cotton will do it early, as there will be some moisture in the upper soil layer. However, not many farmers will go in for early sowing. Vaghela said that the onion crop, which has been harvested in most places and may be lying in the fields, would be adversely affected as well.
‘Agri Min Will promote GM mustard if approved by Envir Min’edit
The process takes time and definitely it will not be available for cultivation this year. This is a crop grown in association with government research body ICAR, he added. The GEAC had given a ‘positive’ recommendation to the widely-consumed crop, but with ‘certain conditions’. With its green signal, GM Mustard is a step closer to becoming India s first edible GM crop. The decision had received sharp reactions from anti-GM activists who said such varieties will lead to huge losses for farmers as it would ‘monopolise’ the seed market. Currently, Bt cotton is the only GM crop allowed for commercial cultivation. There is moratorium on Bt brinjal
Sugarcane seedling transplanter developed in Coimbatoreedit
The Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR)- Sugarcane Breeding Institute, Coimbatore, and Central Institute of Agricultural Engineering, Coimbatore regional centre, have jointly developed and commercialised a tractor-mounted, two-row mechanical transplanter for sugarcane seedlings raised from sugarcane bud chips and single-bud setts.
On GM Mustard, agriculture minister gives thumbs up, but environment ministry yet to give all-clearedit
Agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh on Monday said his ministry does not have any reservations over genetically modified (GM) high-yielding variety of mustard, recently cleared by Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) for commercial cultivation, while environment ministry is yet to give its nod.
Big Data Is Transforming How Breeders Create Better Seedsedit
This summer, in cornfields in Iowa and Nebraska, about a thousand small point-and-shoot digital cameras will be enclosed in waterproof cases, mounted on poles and attached to solar-powered battery chargers. They will take pictures every ten minutes as plants grow; all part of a plan to create better seeds. “We watch plants go through their normal growth and development and also we watch them respond to environmental stressors, like drought and so forth,” says Pat Schnable, director of the Plant Sciences Institute at Iowa State University.
Open source helping farmers fight to take back their toolsedit
At the beginning of computing, software was considered open source. But with the development of computers and the rise of software companies such as Microsoft at the time, proprietary software became the main ruler in the field of technology. Today, we see that open source software has proven to be the best way to develop software, and along with it we saw the rise of open hardware movement driven by the frustrations users encountered when they could not fix their hardware. These users had to rely on hardware manufacturers who were slow in fixing bugs and were pushing updates for security ever so often.
Drones catch state’s eye, comprehensive policy on the cardsedit
If all goes well, Karnataka will soon become the first state in the country to use drones in all its departments. The state government is planning to come up with a comprehensive policy on using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in various government departments following Karnataka Jnana Ayoga (KJA) recommendations. Drones will be used in the state to gather information on drought, monitor crowds, tackle forest fire, survey encroachment and perform several other tasks.
Yogi Adityanath bats for food processing to prevent farmers’ suicideedit
Taking a pro-farmer stance, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Monday said the scourge of farmers’ suicide in the country could be prevented to a large extent simply by boosting the food processing sector. He said the farmers get distressed when they do not get adequate prices for their agricultural produce in the market and could lead to suicide too.
Anti-GM crop activists urge ‘supreme objectivity’edit
Anti-GM crop activists today urged new Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan to exercise “supreme objectivity” on decisions regarding the matter, claiming it is an “unacceptable conflict of interest” that he also holds the science and technology portfolio. Vardhan, who took charge of the environment ministry today, following the sudden death of Anil Madhav Dave, is also the minister for science and technology and earth sciences.