DNA India

Organic farmers in the state need to come together to tap markets for their products if they are to succeed was what experts and farmers said at a function organised by the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme to recognise such farmers in the state. Experts pointed out how the push so far has been on the production of organic produce but not much has been done to create better markets for such products. Many farmers rued that despite their products being organic and free of chemicals, they ended up getting the same rate as non-organic produce.

 

The New Indian Express

With Maize cultivation expected to start in a few days, the agriculture department along with Agricultural Technology Management Agency (ATMA) organised an awareness program to educate farmers on the steps they need to take to prevent fall armyworm (FAW) attack. Last season, 16,000 farmers cultivated maize on 15,000 hectares of land. Of this more than 12,000 hectares were lost to fall army worm attack.

 

CNBC TV

Food inflation has been remarkably subdued for the past few years. In the last three years, food inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for food and beverages has averaged just 2 percent, well below the average since 2012 of 6 percent. For the economy, sustained low food inflation is a mixed blessing. On one hand, it allows overall inflation to remain low enabling monetary policy to be accommodative. But on the other hand, by depressing rural incomes, it impacts rural consumption. That said, food inflation has been on an upswing in the last few months.

ANI News

Pushing forward his agenda for crop diversification to end the vicious wheat-paddy cycle and save the depleting groundwater in the state, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Tuesday asked the State Planning Board (SPB) to chalk out a comprehensive crop diversification model. According to an official statement, the SPB has also been directed to undertake a detailed review of the various schemes of the Agriculture Department to bring in the much-needed reforms in the sector.

The Hans India

Deccan Development Society wants the agricultural scientists and researchers to study and understand the knowledge and culture of the farmers for finding solutions to the agrarian crisis. Addressing a press conference here, Society director P V Satheesh said the society had taken up a study ‘Interfacing Farmers’ Science with Formal Science’ which concluded that the way out r the food and farming crisis can be found in farmers’ knowledge and culture which are a product of their ecological understanding of agriculture and the world around it. He said the interrelation between farmers’ knowledge and culture should be clearly studied and understood by agricultural scientists and researchers.

ED Times

Women’s participation in agriculture as cultivators, labours and entrepreneurs is constantly increasing since 1970s (Duwury, 1989; and Venkateshwarlu, 1999). The main reason behind feminisation of agriculture is- the migration of men from rural areas to urban areas in search of better economic opportunities. The government in its report said that it will provide 30% of the budget for the women beneficiaries “in all ongoing schemes/programmes and development activities.”

Krishi Jagran

Better prices generated by crops like cotton and maize last year and the new strategy of crop diversification adopted by Punjab and Haryana governments have bound the farmers of these two States to plant less rice this Kharif season as compared to the previous.

E – Gov

IBM Watson Decision Platform for Agriculture can help growers and enterprises in India reap the benefits of technology and innovation. This IBM solution combines advanced capabilities of cloud, AI, analytics and Internet of Things (IoT) with accurate weather forecasts and data collected from an abundance of farm equipment, remote sensors and environmental information to help farmers make faster, more informed decisions.

The Times of India

Kharif sowing in Nashik region has picked up pace in the past few days following good rainfall. As per data available with the agriculture department, around 80.13% of sowing has been completed in Nashik region, comprising four districts. Nandurbar district tops the chart with 88.75% sowing followed by Jalgaon (88.23%), Dhule (73.10%) and Nashik (70.84%).