The Wire

The Rashtriya Kisan Mahasangh, a coalition of about 130 farmer organisations from across the country, is planning a nation-wide yatra to highlight the plight of farmers and the failure of the Narendra Modi-led government to address the issues plaguing agriculture. According to a tentative plan, the yatra will begin on August 9 in India’s northern most state Jammu and Kashmir and conclude in Kanyakumari, the southern tip of the country.

Outlook

Cutting across party lines, Goa politicians have started accepting ‘agriculture challenge’, venturing into paddy fields and helping farmers who are currently planting saplings after the onset of monsoon.Congress MLA Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco was the first one to take up the challenge, thrown by Siddhesh Bhagat, the sarpanch of Aquem-Baixo panchayat in South Goa to create awareness about farming.

SME Times

Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu on Tusday said that India needs to adopt a multi-pronged strategy to make agriculture viable and profitable.

ddressing Scientists, Farm Experts and Farmers at the Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture (CRIDA), in Hyderabad, the Vice President added that the farm income must be supplemented by non-farm occupations and value addition through food processing.

The Times of India

Suggesting the farmers to become exporters to make better gains, state horticulture commissioner Chiranjeevi Chaudhary has asked the agriculture market yard officials to extend support to the farmers in producing export quality stocks. He said that shifting to the organic cultivation will definitely help the farmers reap rich in chilli crop.

The Telegraph

The Odisha government on Tuesday again raised the issue of minimum support price (MSP) of paddy and demanded that the MSP must be 1.5 times the cost of production.Targeting the Centre for delay in fixing the MSP, agriculture minister Pradeep Maharathy said: “The Government of India decides the MSP by mid-June. But unfortunately, July has begun and the Centre is yet to fix the prices.”

Outlook

The Congress today created uproar in the Chhattisgarh Legislative Assembly on the second day of the monsoon session alleging that suicides by farmers are on rise due to “wrong policies” of the BJP government.

Mumbai Mirror

There’s a very famous quote that has been attributed to Abraham Lincoln, though some experts contend those were not his exact words: “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

The Indian Express

A “vedic” technique which requires a farmer to sit, meditate and channel “cosmic energy” by chanting “Om rom jum sah” for at least 20 minutes a day for better yields, got the backing of Goa Agriculture Minister Vijay Sardesai Tuesday after he inaugurated a pilot project at a field, close to his residence in Fatorda.

The Telegraph

Senior ministers on Tuesday interacted with farmers to seek their suggestions on the flagship MNREGA scheme.The dialogue was held at the chief minister’s 1 Aney Marg official residence. Chief minister Nitish Kumar though was not present as he was indisposed.

The Times of India

Even as lakhs of farmers are waiting for chief minister H D Kumaraswamy’s budget in the hope that their loans will be waived, landless tenant farmers and agriculture labourers, who number around 1.7 crore, are worried if they’d be left out of the loan waiver scheme.

CSR Journal

Air pollution is at an all time rise in India because of industrialisation and urbanisation in lieu of national development. Especially in Northern India, the air quality has dropped down at alarming levels causing the government to declare red alert several times in the last couple of years.