Media Monitor
Agriculture Industry
Wheat procurement to rev up rural economy in stateedit
UP government on Sunday looked set to lend a thrust to rural economy amid ongoing lockdown period by announcing initiation of wheat procurement within the minimum support price (MSP) from April 15. The decision was taken at a high-level meeting presided over by chief minister Yogi Adityanath at his official residence. Additional chief secretary Awanish Awasthi said, “The chief minister has directed that Mandi system should be further strengthened and social distancing be maintained during wheat procurement.”
Horticulture pile-up: Farmers’ losses seen at Rs 15000 croreedit
The pile-up of harvested or un-harvested perishables may have caused farmers a loss of around Rs 15,000 crore. Market arrivals of fruits and vegetables have sharply fallen since the imposition of the lockdown (see chart), and if it is extended by another month, losses could swell to Rs 40,000-Rs 50,000 crore, if not more, traders and economists say.
In Karnataka’s Boragaon, farmers suffer losses worth lakhs in lockdown merely months after damaging floodsedit
“Be it any crisis, it’s the farmer who has to suffer. If the farmer won’t suffer on behalf of others, how will the society survive?” asks 48-year-old Sanjay Barwade, a farmer from the village of Boragaon in the Chikodi taluka of Karnataka’s Belagavi district. After his two-and-a-half-acre-wide field was ravaged in the August 2019 floods, Barwade took an agricultural loan of Rs 40,000 for his rabi crops. Thereon, it was going according to plan – 3,000 kilograms of beans, 100 kilograms of coriander, and sugarcane would be harvested on an acre of land, which was due to mature post-November this year.
Telangana sees a steady rise in paddy areaedit
Telangana State is slowly but surely emerging as the ‘Rice Bowl of India’. Within a short span of five years, the area under paddy cultivation has doubled, from 22.7 lakh acres in 2014-15 to 40.7 lakh acres in the 2019-20 kharif season. With regard to yasangi, the area under paddy cultivation has increased more than three-fold, from 12.23 lakh acres in 2014-15 to 39.12 lakh acres in the ongoing season in the State. It should not come as a surprise then that the State government is targetting a humongous one crore acres in a single season in the next three years.
Column | Why Kerala needs to become a pioneer in urban farmingedit
One of the best things the Soviet Union ever did for its citizens was allotting land for dachas or summer cottages. It has been a tradition from the 1950s for Russians and citizens of former Soviet countries to use the land around their dachas to farm potatoes, beetroot, cabbages and other vegetables, as well as grow fruits and berries. Many urban families harvest enough potatoes to last all winter. They would also pickle cabbages and cucumbers and make jams from berries. (Anton Chekhov loved having a spoonful of homemade berry jam with his black tea).
Farmers stare at bitter Baiskahi as Covid-19 hits in peak seasonedit
As Covid-19 rages, in farms across the country it’s a grim Baiskahi staring at farmers hit by a plethora of woes — from the labour force working on fields drying up due to fear and migration to crops drying up, lack of liquidity among farmers and even a severe shortage of gunny bags to pack produce. Even fear of catching the virus in big cities is keeping farmers and transporters away from transporting crop and vegetables. Most farmers in Punjab and Haryana grow wheat, the biggest rabi crop. It will be difficult to ask them to stagger their harvest as they are worried over clearing their fields to prepare for sowing of kharif (summer-sown) crops like ...
From UP to Maharashtra, farmers say problem not in the field but in marketedit
In early November, the district administration of Chandauli in eastern Uttar Pradesh banned harvester combines, citing a state government order to prevent burning of parali (leftover straw) from the paddy cut by these machines. Panic-stricken farmers approached the district magistrate, who relented after obtaining an assurance that they would not burn any standing stubble after machine-harvesting. The permission came late: Paddy harvesting could start only by early-December, against the normal time from mid-November. And with heavy rains in December 11-13, the crop also suffered extensive damage and grain discolouration.