Financial Express

Three essential pillars of economic reforms are liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation. Liberalisation means removal of state restrictions on private individual activities; privatisation encompasses transfer of business, industry or service from public to private ownership and control; and globalisation is the transborder spread of products, technology and information through international trade and transfer. It is believed that though a large number of reforms have been introduced in the agriculture sector in the last few years, they have met with limited success in liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation of agriculture. Importantly, policy reforms in the sector have not yielded the anticipated benefits to farmers and consumers.

UNI

Jul 11 (UNI) Odisha government today approved 24 projects worth Rs.250 crore under the Rashtriya Krishi Vikash Yojana (RKVY) for the development of agriculture and increasing the income of the farmers. The projects were approved and sanctioned at a meeting of the state-level approval committee of the Rashtriya Krishi Vikash Yojana held here under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary A P Padhi. After the meeting Agriculture Secretary Sourabh Garg said the projects are related to agriculture, dairy farming , fisheries, pesticide management and strengthening of green revolution in the state.

Financial Express

Bridging the digital gap that rural India witnesses, and alleviating the lack of awareness in farming, the Uttar Pradesh government killed two birds with one stone by launching another campaign under its The Million Farmers’ School (TMFS) programme. The programme brought thousands of farmers in touch with agriculture scientists by using digital media as a platform, The Indian Express reported. Called ‘Vaigyanikon ki Baat, Kisaano ke Saath’ (scientists-talking-to-farmers), the programme was carried out early in June and was conducted by scientists from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre), state agricultural universities and the department itself.

The Hans India

Ninth Agriculture Leadership Conclave 2019 kicked off in New Delhi today. Agriculture Today Group President Dr M J Khan addressing the 9th Agriculture Leadership Conclave 2019 said ‘Agriculture Today’, a premier agriculture monthly led by Agriculture Today Group, has been the voice of farmers for the last many years. The Group also was instrumental in organising such events where all the stakeholders could be brought to one platform to deliberate upon.

Business Standard

India may receive below-average rainfall in the next two weeks with a large deficit in the soybean and cotton growing central and western regions, a weather department official said on Thursday, raising concerns over the output of summer-sown crops.

Down To Earth

In a last-ditch attempt to arrest the fall in its water table, Haryana is incentivising farmers to quit growing water-intensive paddy and shift to crops like maize and pulses. Launched on May 27, Jal Hi Jeevan Hai, the crop diversification scheme, is being implemented on a pilot basis in seven blocks, each in a different district.

The Wire

Land and labour are two basic factors needed by rural people for income generation. While women have always played a key role in agricultural production, their importance both as workers and as farm managers has been growing in the last two decades as more men move to non-farm jobs – leading to an increased feminisation of agriculture.

The Week

India’s only B-school to offer a curriculum integrated with Harvard Business School Online courses, today announced a two-year full-time Rural and Agribusiness Management course affiliated to Savitribai Phule University and approved by AICTE. The AICTE approved PGDM course and MBA course will be offered at ASM IIBR and ASM IBMR respectively. The course will also be offered in the executive education format at the ASM Executive Education Centre. The courses will have specializations in Finance, Operations and Marketing along with practical training and guidance from leading names in agribusiness. Prakash Bakshi, ex-chairman of NABARD, has designed the curriculum with leading industry stalwarts likely as advisors. The course is probably the only one of its kind in Maharashtra ...

Quint

According to a study published by the renowned journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, the practice of raising animals for meat, eggs, and dairy sucks up one-third of the world’s freshwater resources, which we simply cannot afford to lose at this critical stage. The number of Indians lacking access to safe water is 163 million, and according to a World Bank report, 40 percent of our country’s population will not have access to safe drinking water by 2030.

Swarajya

India’s growth trajectory has surprised many because of its direct transition from an agriculture-based economy to a service-driven economy. A consequence of this transition is the lack of expansion in low-skilled employment opportunities in the manufacturing sector, which has restricted the surplus labour in the agriculture sector from moving towards more productive sectors.

The Hans India

Mandal Agriculture Officer Usha on Wednesday advised farmers to take up sowing as suggested by the department officials and not to opt for spurious seeds. She was speaking after inspecting farm lands in Pachigudem and outskirts of Patancheru along with the department officials. Usha, who saw the paddy sowings in the field of former ZPTC Jaipal, stated that faulty

The Times of India

Despite lower yields due to scanty rain last year, Gujarat’s farmers seem to be banking on groundnut and cotton this kharif season. The acreage sown with groundnut this season has reached 11.85 lakh hectares, almost double the 5.17 lakh hectares sown with the crop last year. Some 18.76 lakh hectares has been sown with cotton as on July 8, as compared to 11.44 lakh hectares for the same period in 2018, data from the state agriculture department shows.

The Indian Express

Good rates for their spring season (March to June) maize crop has encouraged several farmers in Punjab to diversify from paddy to maize in the kharif (June to October) season. The area under maize has already increased by 16% as compared to last kharif season, at a time when sowing is still underway.

The Times of India

The government will pay Rs 7 lakh ex-gratia to families of farmers who committed suicide in the past five years due to agriculture crisis or debt. Chief minister Y S Jaganmohan Reddy in a video conference on Wednesday directed district collectors to identify families who lost breadwinners. He told collectors that 1,513 farmers committed suicide from 2014 to 2019 as per district crime records bureau. The previous government paid ex-gratia to 391 farmers only, he said.

The Telegraph

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday told the Assembly that farming was on the decline on the Singur land that had been reclaimed from the aborted Tata Nano project and returned to farmers, and those who did not want to continue cultivating it could not be forced to do so.

The Economic Times

Government is soon going to make changes to make insurance companies more accountable in settling of crop insurance claims, said Ashish Bhutani, CEO, Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), the flagship scheme started in Modi governments’s first term. The government is concerned about ‘lack of satisfaction among farmers’ despite spending of Rs 15,000 crore annually on the scheme by the central government and an equal amount by the state governments.