The Times of India

The district administration has asked the farmers and registered farmers groups to buy solar dryers with a subsidy of 50% to 60% in order to ensure that their farm produce does not lose its nutritional value and consumers get healthy products. The dryer would help farmers get uniformly dried produce without any husk and stones thereby increasing the quality and fetch more profit, the officials added.

The Times of India

India needs to bring agriculture under the concurrent list, come up with a national agriculture policy, set up an agricultural council on the lines of the GST Council, establish a national crop planning commission and scrap the minimum support price (MSP) mechanism to transform the country’s agricultural sector. These are among a slew of measures suggested by the Federation of Seed Industry of India (FSII) in a letter to the high-powered committee of chief ministers for the transformation of Indian agriculture.

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Twenty-six-year-old Laxmi Salami comes from a long line of farmers who have remained true to the tried and tested ways of cotton cultivation that they know. Unsurprisingly, she was unwilling to stray from the well-trodden path into organic farming, which is unfamiliar territory for her. But when the young cotton farmer, hailing from Gajandoh village in Chhindwara district of Madhya Pradesh, reluctantly agreed to participate in an organic farming project and try something new on her field, the results were a welcome surprise.

Devi Discourse

Seed industry seeks national policy on agriculture Hyderabad, the Federation of Seed Industry of India (FSII) has written to the high-powered committee of chief ministers on the transformation for Indian agriculture seeking its recommendation to the Centre to come out with a national policy on agriculture as 50 per cent of the countrys population depends on it. The FSII has also, among others, requested the committee to speed up the regulatory process for using biotechnology for crop yield and increased production.

Nagaland Post

State Agriculture and Corporation minister G Kaito Aye said Nagaland would be declared an Organic State once an organic policy was adopted, adding that efforts were also on to ensure that farmers were not deprived. The government was also working together with all stakeholders to launch a local organic brand and meet requirements for organic agricultural produce in the State and align them as much as possible with the requirements of the importing countries.

CNBC TV18

The fourth Advance Estimates of production of major crops for 2018-19 have been released by the Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare on August 19. As per Fourth Advance Estimates, total food grain production in the country is estimated at 284.95 million tonnes which is nearly steady compared with 285.01 million tonnes of production for 2017-18. For the next year, the estimate for the food grain output is at 291 million tonnes, which would be a record high.

Down to Earth

The Government of India is working out a plan to double farmers’ income by 2022, but how would that be possible by halving the farmer population is something that remains a mystery. The government plans to take up a number of measures and expand into allied sectors, promote zero-budget farming, organic farming, etc to double the income of the exiting farmers.