The New Indian Express

‘Thaliru’ has boosted the confidence of farmers. “The project helps small scale or landless farmers to get more land for cultivation. Earlier, land owners were unwilling to lease out their unused land fearing that they would face ownership issues in future,” he said. Sreekumaran Nair is a member of the constituency-level committee for the implementation of ‘Thaliru’.

The New Indian Express

With a view to save water for irrigation, Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami on Friday announced a ploughing subsidy of Rs 600 per acre, to promote direct sowing of paddy in delta districts. “This grant will be given for five lakh acres where direct sowing is adopted. For this purpose, Rs 30 crore has been allocated,” the chief minister said in a statement.

The Financial Express

The proliferation of technologies and digital applications will address many of the agriculture-related issues and give a multi-dimensional push to agriculture. New technologies offer immense opportunities for increasing crop production, improving the nutritional value of crops, reducing input prices for farmers, improving the overall agri-supply chain, reducing wastage in the distribution system, enabling farm mechanisation, and ensuring an ease in connectivity between farmers and the consumers by providing linkages between the consumer and producer.

The Hans India

Speaking at the event, Ram Kaundinya, Director General, FSII said, “It is essential for farmers to get access to the latest technologies. Taking resort to illegal planting is only making farmers vulnerable towards buying seeds at a high price and taking advice from individuals without technical knowledge. The combination of these circumstances will only push the farmer towards more uncertainties and crop failure.”

Reuters

Indian farmers have planted summer-sown crops on 97.5 million hectares, down 2.3% year on year, agriculture ministry data showed on Friday, substantially narrowing the sowing gap compared with last year from previous weeks. The gap between planting figures for equivalent weeks of 2019 and 2018 has narrowed from the 4.1% reported last week. The Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare will keep updating provisional sowing figures as it gathers more information from state governments. The planting figures are also subject to revision depending on the progress of the June-September monsoon season.

The Times of India

Maize is an important cereal crop grown in Tamil Nadu and the production area is an area of 3.6 lakh hectares. But a new invasive pest, maize fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda) has been causing severe damage to the crop since July 2018 in the state. The South Asia Biotechnology Centre (SABC), New Delhi along with TNAU, Coimbatore and Department of Agriculture, Government of Tamil Nadu is jointly organising a day workshop on ‘Maize Fall Armyworm and Technology Capsule’ to sensitise the progressive maize farmers and agricultural input dealers of Coimbatore district.

United News of India

Himachal Pradesh Agriculture Minister Ram Lal Markanda on Friday stated that after launching Solar Fencing Scheme gained popularity among farmers and helped them to save their standing crops. Replying to a query raised by the Mr Rakesh Pathania of BJP during the question hour he said that like solar fencing in the high altitude areas chain or barb wire fencing was launched by the department in the foothills or plain area.

The Wire

Nanotechnology has been supporting the Indian agricultural market to develop products and processes with higher efficiency and lower costs. With the increasing scope to commercialise this technology, the government has now proposed a set of guidelines to regulate and maintain quality and safety of the products and processes.