Media Monitor
Agriculture Industry
UP sets aside Rs 36000 cr for farm loan waiver in budgetedit
The Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday presented a Rs 3,84,660-crore budget for 2017-18 — up 10.9% from the previous year — in the state assembly with a special provision of Rs 36,000 crore to enable waiver of crop loans of small and marginal farmers.
Monsoon lull hits soybean sowing operationsedit
The lull in the progress of monsoon and bearish trend in soybean prices does not augur well for the growers this Kharif season. Several areas in the soybean growing regions of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan are yet to be covered, thanks to the slow progress of rains and the break in the monsoon could possibly mean re-sowing for those who have already completed operations, according to top industry people. Concerned over these factors, there is a growing fear that farmers may turn to alternative crops, thereby reducing soybean acreage, which may fall below last year’s 110 lakh hectares.
Government keen on promoting hybrid vegetablesedit
The state has also planned to set up 597 ‘pack’ houses to add value to the horticulture produce in districts. Similarly, 160 sub-agricultural extension centres will be built, in addition to 146 centres coming up in block level to help farmers get the services of agriculture department, including seeds and micro-nutrients. The chief minister said the Centre of Excellence for Bio-Technology will be established in the Tamil Nadu Agriculture University in Coimbatore at an estimated cost of Rs 430 crore, with the preliminary sanction of Rs 51 crore this fiscal year. Adequate infrastructure facilities will be provided in agriculture institutions across the state at a cost of Rs 108 crore.
Farmers see crops wilt due to dry spelledit
Deccan Chronicle The Asian Age
Farmers in India run the risk of planting too much, too fast in the current monsoon season as an unexpected dry spell starts to wilt summer-sown crops, raising fears of lower yields and potentially forcing some farmers to resow crops. Lower yields or crop failure will increase discontent among farmers that has triggered protests in the big agrarian states in recent months and forced the state governments to waive billions of dollars of farm loans.
Dry spell threatens Indian summer crops, could raise farmers woesedit
The ongoing dryness is affecting central, western and southern India, key producing regions for cotton, soybean, corn, sugarcane, pulses and rice. Poor output of summer crops could also raise food prices, restricting the central bank from cutting lending rates, crucial to boosting Asia’s third-biggest economy. “Farmers sowed crops on time, but now they will wilt unless rainfall revives in next few days,” said Faiyaz Hudani, deputy vice president at Kotak Commodity Services Pvt Ltd.
CSCs to sell crop insurance to small, marginal farmersedit
Common Service Centres (CSCs), falling under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, have started offering crop insurance scheme to small and marginal farmers who have not availed any loan from any bank or financial institution. The initiative was launched in June and will cover only ‘non-loanee’ farmers, CSC e-Governance Services India Ltd CEO Dinesh Tyagi told DNA Money.
Centre urged to increase farm credit cover to 100%edit
“We have proposed five-year credit term to cover all expenses of farmers such as cultivation, children’s education, house construction and marriage of daughters. The present coverage of the farm credit is 20 per cent. We have asked the PMO to widen its coverage to 100 per cent on an urgent basis,” said Tiwari, who is a farmers’ leader as well.
Arunachal govt favours RS technology for better crop yieldedit
He said that remote sensing instruments could be an effective tool for planning in agriculture and horticulture. He requested Agriculture Minister Wangki Lowang to conduct another round of meeting with the officers of RSI and NABARD and get the required data from RSI by letting them conduct land mapping for the state. This is published unedited from the PTI feed.
Agricultural Reforms Should Help Farmersedit
Another example is the food procurement and Public Distribution Scheme. These were aimed to achieve three objectives with one instrument: that of food security, price stability and farm viability. It has been a partial success, since PDS offtake is very low in States with high poverty. In the past, it has also led to anomalous situations of high food stocks in government warehouses and also high food prices. Similarly, various rural development initiatives have met with limited success, as is testified by the fact that the bulk of India’s poverty is still within rural areas and in agriculture.
Banks should look at funding unorganised sector, says Arun Jaitleyedit
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today exhorted financial institutions, including Nabard, and banks to focus on funding the unfunded so that employment in the unorganised sector goes up. “It is a fact that people in the unorganised sector are much higher than the organised sector, but the former gets credit with a lot of difficulty,” he said at an event organised by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) here.
‘Indian Agro-Economy Faces Serious Disadvantages Due To Various Restrictions’edit
This government has done enough of work though for, micro irrigation, fertilisers, soil-health, crop insurance even 4 per cent rate of farm credit is good enough. These efforts are only on input side of farming, it still did not work for output. Shetkari Sangathan also believe that freedom of technology is not for farmers, any and every NGO simply move to court against GM seed and government kept watching or fighting cases. Declining farmers’ income stems from central dictates’ and states keep struggling with periodic loan waivers. Shetkari believes in the mantra of, “Undoing socialist strangle hold on farmers and liberalize”.
How renewable farming can solve problems of climate change and conflictsedit
With organic farming, emissions will drop to zero and the pollution of earlier times can also be handled as these plants will absorb the atmospheric carbon through photosynthesis. Estimates suggest that if the whole world turns organic, climate change can be dealt with in 10 years. So, it’s very important that we think beyond solar or wind energy because even the best of that is not based on life. It doesn’t include photosynthesis GM.
China Agriculture Sector Given a Boost by Toria Investmentedit
The goal is to create a ‘smart’ farming culture where farmers are better informed by using data generated by sensors placed in the fields. This data is then used by Artificial Intelligence systems that will adjust device settings to determine optimum water volume to be sprayed on crops, and will also adjust temperatures through mechanical roofing to ensure optimal levels of soil fertility. This framework relies on integrating information technology with every aspect of the farming process. Biotechnology is another attractive technological agricultural advancement. Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) crops are engineered to suit local farmers.