Rural Marketing

New Holland Agriculture, one of the leading agriculture equipment manufacturer, has relaunched its straw management campaign to combat crop-residue burning in the Kallar Majri village in Patiala district of Punjab recently. The campaign was launched in the village, in the presence of officials of Department of Agriculture, Government of Punjab, senior official from New Holland Agriculture and farmers from Kallar Majri and nearby villages.

Business Today

Absence of adequate and well trained human resources at the grass root level is impacting the quality of India’s official agriculture statistics, National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) has found.

The Tribune

The Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) has fined 1,182 farmers for burning paddy stubble this season. Last year, the count was 998 during the same session.

The Tribune

Under a special campaign of the Punjab Government, the Department of Agriculture, Mansa, has provided subsidy worth Rs 5.24 crore to farmers of the district to purchase machinery for crop residue management and direct sowing.

Pragativadi

It is engulfed by the thick layer of smog and dust on Wednesday. System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR) said the major pollutant PM (Particulate Matter) is of very poor category.

Mint

Even though the agrarian crisis has taken a political turn with every party trying to portray itself as the saviour of the farming community, there is no serious thought from any of them on how to revive the agrarian economy. All of them have been parroting the usual prescriptions of farm loan waiver and a more generous and better implemented minimum support price (MSP). Most of these are time-tested schemes that have been offered for decades. The irony is also that most political activists and farmers’ organizations have also bought these ideas as the only ways of saving the farmer and agriculture.

State Times

Civil Society for Development of J&K State (CSD J&K), while expressing concern over fast commercialisation of agriculture land, asked farmers to discourage change of land use of their green fields that produce best quality paddy and other crops. The society members also observed that change of land use is shrinking agriculture land and thus yield is also decreasing.

Mumbai Mirror

Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao’s son and IT Minister KT Rama Rao declared to the Election Commission that agriculture is his main occupation. Rama Rao filed his nomination papers for election from Siricilla in Karimnagar district on the last day of nominations on Monday.

UNI

The sowing of wheat has been completed in an area of 26.20 lakh hectares in Punjab which was 77 per cent of the total area to be sown under wheat. Stating this here on Tuesday, Director Agriculture Jasbir Singh Bains pointed out that area sown under wheat is three per cent more than previous year. Last year, wheat was sown in 25.12 lakh hectares till date achieving 74 per cent sowing. According to information received by the department, 97 per cent sowing had been completed in Patiala district, while 98 per cent in Sangrur and Fatehgarh Sahib districts.

The New Indian Express

Around 30 per cent of the development plan fund of the city Corporation will be for the agriculture working group projects. This was announced at the development seminar on plan formulation for 2019-20 held at St Mary’s Higher Secondary School, Pattom, on Sunday. The BJP councillors tried to disrupt the function in protest over the Sabarimala issue when Tourism Minister Kadakampally Surendran was called for inaugurating the Corporation’s third-year plan formulation for 2019-20.

India Today

Two years after demonetisation, the Union agriculture ministry has admitted that the farmers were badly hit by the note ban. Demonetisation had made 86 per cent of existing currency (in denominations of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000) illegal tender. The farmers, particularly the smaller ones, depend on cash for the purchase of seeds and fertilisers.