The Indian Express

Every farmer group has at least eight members who have pooled in their financial resources to purchase all types of stubble management machines from the government. These groups will supply ‘stubble management machines’ to fellow farmers at “reasonable rents”. Till date, the Punjab government had provided 50,609 stubble management machines, including 28,609 machines in 2018-19 and 22,000 machines in 2019-20 to individual farmers, farmers’ groups and others.

The Financial Express

Structural reforms in agriculture and exports are needed to bring growth rate back to higher levels, Niti Aayog chief executive Amitabh Kant said Tuesday. He also said the fundamentals of the economy are intact which will help the government take back the economy to the higher growth trajectory soon despite the global slowdown. Comments come at a time when the economy has slowed to a six-year low of 5 percent in the June quarter and exports began to degrew, amidst the deepening slump even in the low-ticket FMGC sector, leave alone the high-ticket automobiles.

The Financial Express

Thanks to the headway made by the states in digitisation of land records — as many as 16 have reported that 100% of their land records are now digital —, the government has embarked on a plan to provide a unique identity number to each landholding, so that the land titles/ownerships are clear and indisputably defined and the location of each plot is GIS-tagged. The unique identity numbers for landholdings have multiple benefits: Clear titles and the resultant facility to track transactions could spur the urban and rural real estate markets, which have been in the doldrums for quite a while; determination and collection of taxes like stamp duty and registration fees would be easier and ...

The Indian Express

The Narendra Modi government has recently announced its intention of introducing price controls in crop protection chemicals. This comes almost four years after the Agriculture Ministry issued a price control order, giving it powers to fix the maximum retail price (MRP) of cotton seeds and also the trait value payable to the developer/licensor of genetically modified Bt technology. There is talk now of the government even considering bringing all seeds under price control.

Millennium Post

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday expressed her happiness after Bengal got nominated for the Krishi Karman award by the Centre yet again. She also congratulated the government officials who contributed to achieving the significant milestone. Taking to Twitter, Banerjee said: “I am happy to share that West Bengal has been selected once again for Krishi Karman Award by Govt of India for the year 2017-18, primarily for maize production.”

The Financial Express

Many opine ‘Agriculture 4.0’ akin to 4G of telecom. I believe Agriculture 4.0 is “going back to basics, but with technology as its underpinning” to usher in sustainability, in the wake of climate change and degradation of our agricultural ecosystems. We need to re-look at agriculture with the ‘farmer at the centre’, and need to focus on 10 ‘elements of strategy’. These elements also supplement the recommendations of the High Powered Committee of Chief Ministers that is primarily examining agri-market reforms.

The Financial Express

To ensure that millions of small and marginal farmers—India has a total of around 120 million farmers—are not at the mercy of moneylenders, or other expensive sources of finance, the government has, historically, mandated that banks ensure that a certain share of their lending is to these farmers. Currently, 18% of all bank lending has to be mandatorily lent to the agriculture sector. And, to ensure farmers get loans at low rates of interest, the government pays a certain proportion of the interest to banks directly while farmers pay the rest.

The Times of India

As a part of its series of pre-election decisions, the state government has brought all farmers, irrespective of land holding limit, within the ambit of a Rs3,000 crore World Bank-sponsored assistance scheme for the agriculturists, earlier only meant for small and marginal cultivators. The scheme is applicable in farmers’ suicide and drought-affected districts of Vidarbha and Marathwada to only those having land holdings within 5 acres, the criterion for small and marginal farmers.