Media Monitor
Agriculture Industry
Karnataka lockdown: Farmers take massive hit as transport halts prices, crashedit
Farm-gate prices have crashed, there’s no labour available for the fields, and growers are struggling to send their produce to markets because of supply-chain disruption. The agricultural sector in Karnataka is facing one of its worst crises ever in the wake of the coronaviruslinked nationwide lockdown, just months after being buffeted by monsoon floods. The severity of the distress can be gauged from the fact that farmers are unable to find buyers for tomatoes even at the rate of Re 1 per kg.
India invokes WTO peace clause for rice farmersedit
India has invoked the peace clause of the World Trade Organisation. This follows the country exceeding the ceiling of 10 per cent on support it offered to rice farmers in the marketing year 2018-19.
The government through a notification to the Committee of Agriculture, WTO on March 30th informed that the value of its rice production in 2018-19 was $43.673 billion, while its total support through different measures for rice farmers was $5.004 billion. The support for farmers thus comes to 11.46 per cent of the value of production against the allowed limit of 10 per cent.
How Coronavirus Lockdown Is Affecting The World’s Farmersedit
A large number of countries announced lockdowns and restrictions on movement in a bid to stop the spread of coronavirus. While these restrictions will hopefully help control COVID-19, it is also impacting a very important section of the society: The farmers. Across the world farmers are going through a tough phase because of the social distancing requirements of the current scenario. Here’s how they are coping.
Horticulture crops rot due to lockdownedit
Farmers of horticulture crops such as papaya and pomegranate are badly hit due to the lockdown across the country. Fruits are drying up in nurseries in thousands of acres in Prakasam district. Moreover, big merchants, including exporters from Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Punjab and Maharashtra, were unable to visit the fields to purchase the stocks.
12 lakh farmers in Haryana to get loan moratorium benefitedit
About 12 lakh farmers from Haryana will benefit from the three-month deferment of the date to pay farm loan interest or instalments. This would be applicable to farmers who took loans from co-operative or commercial banks.
Chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Wednesday announced to extend the date for repayment of crop loans by farmers to June 30. The decision was taken in accordance with the directions of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to mitigate the burden of debt servicing brought about by disruptions on account of coronavirus crisis.
Haryana agriculture department officials said there were about 25 lakh beneficiaries of the farm loans availed from the co-operative and commercial bank in the state.
Technology in Agriculture
Union Agriculture Minister Tomarlaunches new features of e-NAM platformedit
The Union Minister of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare, Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, Shri Narendra Singh Tomar here today launched new features of National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) Platform to strengthen agriculture marketing by farmers which will reduce their need to physically come to wholesale mandis for selling their harvested produce, at a time when there is critical need to decongest mandis to effectively fight against COVID-19. These software modules are namely (i) Warehouse based trading module in e-NAM software to facilitate trade from warehouses based on e-NWR (ii) FPO trading module in e-NAM whereby FPOs can trade their produce from their collection center without bringing the produce to APMC. In addition to facilitate inter-mandi and inter-state trade ...