Indian Express

Over the years, export of farm produce has received significant attention from India’s policymakers. Yet, the various government agencies mandated with the task of export promotion — whether the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), Marine Products Exports Development Authority (MPEDA) or the Spices, Tea and Coffee boards — have showcased little by way of actual achievement.

The New Indian Express

Harvest of early samba paddy has commenced in the district, but farmers are reporting drop in yield due to unseasonal rains. In the district, samba and thaladi paddy were cultivated on 1.33 lakh hectares. So far, 4,000 hectares have been harvested, according to Agriculture department.

P Selvaraj, a farmer in Soorakkottai, said he got only 24 bags of 60 kg each of paddy per acre whereas last year it was 36 bags.”’Rain during the flowering stage of the crop led to pollen shedding, resulting in a fall in yield,” he said. An Agriculture department official admitted, “Rain in late November and early December led to pollen shedding and reduction in the yield.”

Devdis Course

The transportation of paddy from grain markets to the rice mills in Haryana will now be done by the state’s food and civil supplies department and procurement agencies instead of rice millers, said a senior official here. The step was taken to avoid “diversion or “bogus paddy purchase” and strengthen the procurement mechanism, said Additional Chief Secretary, Food, Civil Supplies P K Das in a statement here on Wednesday.

Hindustan Times

After two inspections in more than two months’ time, the Haryana government on Wednesday admitted that a fraud of at least ₹90 crore has been detected in the paddy procurement process.

Farmers had cried foul after rice millers claimed that they had procured more paddy than the 64-lakh-tonnes target allotted to them this season.

Farmers had said that the millers bought cheap paddy from neighbouring states as their produce was still in the mandis (grain markets).

Stating that the formal inspection and physical verification, which was subsequent to informal verification, was now over, food and civil supplies additional chief secretary PK Das said more than 42,500 tonnes of paddy was found to be short as per the ...

Rediff

Growth in agriculture and allied activities is expected to be a subdued 2.8 per cent in 2019-20 but farmers’ woes are likely to lessen a bit, according to advance estimates from the statistics office.

These activities are estimated as likely to rise by 9.8 per cent at current prices, indicating food inflation (used by many as a proxy for farmers’ income) of seven per cent, the highest since 2014-15.