Media Monitor
Agriculture Industry
Sowing the seeds of conservationedit
Around 100 other seed conservationists and groups from various parts of India will participate in the festival, which is in its fourth edition. The previous editions were organised in Delhi, Chandigarh and Hyderabad. One of the thrust areas of the event, organised by Bharat Beej Swaraj Manch, which is attached to the Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture, is conservation of heirloom seeds. The event is also supported by Safe Food Alliance.
Tamil Nadu to roll out millet package for farmersedit
The Tamil Nadu government is all set to announce a special financial package to provide succour to delta farmers for the third successive year. The package is aimed at helping farmers raise less water-intensive pulses and millets. The customary June 12 water release from Mettur reservoir will be given a miss this year the sixth consecutive year also owing to shortage of water, depriving the farmers an opportunity to cultivate Kuruvai paddy.
The millet mealedit
Millet processors from across the country gathered recently to brainstorm ways to enter the export market, under an initiative jointly led by International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), and the Institute of Millets Research (IIMR). The suggestions included trade exhibitions and promotions, effective distribution chain and market testing of products. Dr David Bergvinson, Director General of ICRISAT, said the idea was to create a millet movement as it should be made part of the daily meal.
Uttar Pradesh likely to miss 8 mt wheat procurement target by a wide marginedit
Apart from government agencies, the state government has authorised two private agencies to procure wheat to accelerate procurement. The private entities would collectively procure about 100,000 tonnes of wheat and open their separate procurement centres. Meanwhile, UP Agriculture Minister Surya Pratap Shahi said the farmers were happy with the procurement and there was no discontentment among them.
Vegetable prices soar as farmers intensify strikeedit
The farmers’ strike intensified on Friday, hitting supplies and leading to increased prices in the city. Only 15% of the market yards across the state functioned and the arrival of fruits and vegetables at main market yards reduced to 10% compared to Wednesday, aday before the strike commenced. Farmers are agitating for a slew of demands, including a complete loan waiver and implementation of the Swaminathan committee report that proposes support pricing for all agricutural produce.
Road to increasing engagement remains challenging for agri-input startupsedit
AgroStar, which sells products from brands including Dow Chemicals, UPL and Monsanto, is now busy building a lighter app in other regional languages besides the three it is available in. Sheth says farmers who have smartphones now have at least one agri-app on their phones as an essential. The next steps for the company involve building features such as predictive recommendations that can help farmers with notifications on, say, how a certain watermelon crop is likely to be affected by a certain disease due to unseasonal rainfall. It is also working on 30-second cartoon clips to feature in the app as visual aids for the not-so-tech savvy farmers on matters such as applying the right ...
Cotton seed tech clamp liftededit
The waiver could open the door for many more companies to develop hybrid cotton seed varieties based on Monsanto’s Bollgard-2 technology. “The NoC greatly hampered the growth of small and medium seed companies, those denied access to the technology” said Kalyan Goswami, executive director, National Seed Association of India.