Media Monitor
Agriculture Industry
China is going organic and emerging as a leader in sustainable agricultureedit
It’s August and 38C outside a greenhouse on a fruit farm in suburban Nanjing, China. Inside the farmhouse, customers sample organic grapes and peaches.
Ms. Wang, who owns the farm, carefully lifts the cover off a large bin of earthworms. She is raising thousands of them to produce organic fertilizer for her farm.
Wang is one of an increasing number farmers in China who are cutting back on fertilizer and pesticide use, and tapping into consumer demand for organic and sustainably grown food.
China’s total grain output has almost quadrupled since 1961, when the great famine ended. But its success has come at a heavy environmental cost: China uses four times more fertilizer per unit area than the global average and ...
As Farmers Wait For Rabi Procurement, Numbers Do Little to Dispel Worriesedit
Amid rising coronavirus cases in India and the ongoing nationwide lockdown to deal with the pandemic, the agriculture sector has been reeling under a crisis relating to the procurement of rabi crop. In several states, most of the rabi crop has been harvested and farmers are awaiting an appropriate announcement from the government regarding the procurement of crops and their management.
The central and state procurement agencies will have to adopt a fairly decentralised approach to eliminate the possibility of any threat from the epidemic during procurement, such as procuring from centres set up at single or multiple village level.
Procurement centres play a crucial role in ensuring that farmers receive remunerative prices for their crops. However, ...
Across India, a massive agricultural crisis in the making due to coronavirus shutdownedit
The lockdown has severely disrupted India’s agricultural sector, starving it of buyers and migrant labourers as the restrictions halt people’s movements. With a sharp decline in takers for vegetables, fruits and flowers, farmers are looking to the government for help
Uttar Pradesh
For the farmers, who were facing huge financial losses owing to untimely rain and hailstorms in January and February and even March, the lockdown due to the coronavirus outbreak had proved a double whammy.The future was seemingly uncertain not only for those whose rabi crop was standing ready in the fields for harvesting but also lakhs of cane-growers in western UP, prepared with fields for sowing. All were clueless about reaching their fields as ...
All India Kisan Sabha demands measures to mitigate suffering of farmers, workersedit
The All India Agriculture Workers Union and the All India Kisan Sabha has demanded that if the extension of the lockdown is warranted, the Prime Minister and the central government should put in place concrete measures to mitigate the suffering of the masses.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced the lockdown on March 24 without any preparedness to deal with the problems of the migrant workers, farmers, agricultural workers and the most oppressed. This has led to an untold misery for the peasantry, agricultural workers, the poor and the toiling masses. Already more than 150 deaths are being reported due to the unplanned, unprepared and mismanaged lockdown and the accompanying loss of employment, earning, hunger ...
Labour crunch, low demand crippling farm sector during coronavirus lockdownedit
When rainfall in Maharashtra continued till January this year, Shivdas Patil, a chilli farmer in state’s Jalgaon district, thought that by the end of May when harvesting would end, he would laugh all the way to the bank. In normal years rainfall rarely crosses December and the yield of chilli is 15-20 quintals per acre. This year with bountiful rain he expects a bumper crop, with more than 25 quintals of yield per acre.
The parallel emergency of rural Indiaedit
Chandan Gowda, APR 12 2020, 00:26 IST UPDATED: APR 12 2020, 01:31 IST Chandan Gowda At the turn of the millennium, a few chief ministers of India had brought out Vision 2020 documents. Brimming with optimism that India’s future lay in the cities, they coolly noted that the proportion of people living in villages had to come down, the way it had in Western countries. In 2020, their total lack of vision couldn’t be clearer.
Covid-19 crisis: How can India ensure that agricultural markets work in a socially distanced manner?edit
On March 24, as soon Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a 21-day lockdown to curtail the spread of Covid-19, many city residents queued up at grocery stores to stock up on food and other essential items. Panic spread everywhere.
As a result of the bulk buying that night, the prices of food items started rising almost immediately. Within two-three days, supermarkets and grocery stores in Delhi found it difficult to source provisions from wholesalers. For the vulnerable sections of society – daily wage earners, migrants, petty traders and hawkers – the situation has been dismal ever since. Many of them are far from their homes, separated from their families, and unable to access essentials.