CNBC 18

Last year, farmers from across the country put their differences aside and marched to New Delhi highlighting the deepening agrarian crisis. Speaking at EXIM Bank Commencement Day Lecture, panel of experts shared their views on India’s agriculture crisis and global growth concerns.

The Indian Express

Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh have allowed trading through the e-NAM platform following which farmers of Uttar Pradesh have been able to sell their vegetables such as tomato, potato, brinjal and cauliflower to traders outside the state, a government statement said.

The Hindu Business Line

Taking National Agriculture Market, or eNAM, a step forward, a farmer from Haldwani in Uttarakhand sold his tomato crop to a trader in Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh in the first-ever inter-State transaction on the online trading platform, an official statement said here on Thursday.

Business Standard

Former Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal Thursday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking assured marketing of crops and direct income support for farmers to deal with “alarming” agrarian crisis in the country.

Business Standard

A two day high-level workshop to be attended by agriculture and other officials would be held here from February 5 to finalise a road map on crop colonies proposed by the Telangana government.

The Economic Times

The government is considering providing transport subsidy to states for promoting agriculture exports, Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu said Thursday.

Business Standard

Noting that two-third of farmers in India do not have enough land to earn a sustainable living, British economist Lord Meghnad Desai on Thursday said the next government in the country should look to create enough jobs and industries to pull a section of farmers out from agriculture instead of waiving farm loans.

The New Indian Express

Farmer suicides in Kalaburagi district have come down by nearly 50% in the last nine months (April 1 to December 31, 2018) compared to the corresponding period in 2017. According to official sources, 35 farmers have committed suicide between April 1 and December 31, 2018, while the figure was 60 in 2017.

SME Future

As of January 2018, the agriculture sector’s contribution to India’s GDP was 17–18 per cent, according to India Economic Survey 2018. Given the importance of agriculture in the economy of India, the 2003 NSS 59th assessment of the sector should be worrisome because it reveals that 40 per cent of Indian farmers would rather be in some other profession and not farming. One of the primary reasons of this disgruntlement is declining returns on investment (ROIs) and other problems such as crop diseases and improper planning of resources.

The Economic Times

The Fifteenth Finance Commission on Wednesday praised Odisha for making significant progress and hailed Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s non-waiver agriculture scheme.

ET News

Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan witnessed such waivers worth crores. This announcement comes at a time when about 1.8 lakh crores worth farmer waivers have already been announced by seven other Indian states.

The Times of India

Three such organisations — Navdanya, Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture and All-India Kisan Sabha — described reports of Monsanto winning patent rights in the apex court on Tuesday as absurb. They said the court only invalidated a previous order by a division bench of the Delhi high court, which had dismissed Monsanto’s appeal with respect to patent exclusion under Section 3(j) of the Patents Act

News 18

Acclaimed journalist and Founder-Editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India, P Sainath attributes the existential crisis confronting India’s agrarian society to macro-economic policies set in motion 25 years ago. Talking to Anuradha SenGupta, Sainath makes a case for state intervention in agriculture and says the Modi government, with its shifting positions and policies like demonetisation has only aggravated the assault on agrarian livelihoods.