New Indian Express

The State government has drawn up plans to construct over 56,000 ponds across Karnataka — the highest in a year — under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which would provide irrigation and help replenish ground water while providing employment to those who seek it. In 2013, the then Siddaramaiah government introduced the Krishi Bhagya scheme under the Department of Agriculture and included the construction of ‘krishi honda’ (farm pond to harvest rainwater) in its ambit.

CNBC TV 18

India’s soybean production is set to jump by at least 15 percent in 2020 from a year earlier as farmers are increasing the oilseed’s acreage due to timely arrival of monsoon rains and as New Delhi raised the minimum buying price.

Increased production of India’s main summer-sown oilseed could help the world’s biggest vegetable oil importer trim costly purchases of palm oil, soyoil and sunflower oil from Indonesia, Malaysia, Argentina and Ukraine.

It could also revive Indian exports of animal feed ingredient soymeal to places such as Bangladesh, Japan, Vietnam and Iran.

Jagran

The efforts of the government in changing the condition and direction of the farmers through policy reforms have started gaining strength. Tightening legal gripes on the agricultural trade have begun to break. Only through private trade will farmers be able to reach prosperity. ITC, a company engaged in agri-business, says that to be competitive in the global chain of agriculture, sustainable development in domestic agriculture is necessary.

Zee Biz

Veejay Nakra, CEO, Automotive Division, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd, talks about demand from domestic and international markets, Atmanirbhar Bharat, concerns related to supply chain and ways to tackle with it and Atmanirbhar Bharat among others during an interview with Swati Khandelwal, Zee Business. Edited Excerpts: 

Q: There is no specific response in demand, despite Unlock 2.0 has started. The situation is still grim in terms of the pick-up in demand. What is your assessment and what strategy will be adopted at Mahindra and Mahindra to deal with this?

A: You said that the situation looks grim than it depends on what you are comparing. If you compare it with the last year’s numbers than it will look grim as ...

Journey Line

India is one of the leading contributors to domestic and global agricultural production demand. India is the largest producer of milk in the world, the second-largest producer of fruits and vegetables, and the adoption of technology has helped to improve these figures in various ways. But still today Indian agriculture is not free from problems. This Corona period in India has turned the youth of rural India into agriculture. Meanwhile, the educated young generation is looking for ways to improve its efficiency in dealing with the problems in the agricultural sector, besides, it is also putting more emphasis on how the adoption of technology can bind agricultural efficiency in rural India.

Odisha TV

Food, Supplies and Consumer Welfare Department Secretary, Vir Vikram Yadav on Wednesday wrote letter to all district collectors for starting farmers’ registration process to ensure procurement of paddy (kharif crop) for the upcoming Kharif marketing season 2020-21.

Online registration is mandatory for the farmers in their nearest PACS, LAMPCS, WSHG and Pani Panchayats to sell their Kharif and Rabi season’s paddy harvest. Farmers will have to give information on their harvest and bank details in this process, the letter says.

Money Control

The novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, pandemic could have a positive impact on the cash flow from operations (CFO) of state procurement agencies (SPAs) in FY21. This is due to the higher offtake from Food Corporation of India (FCI), in response to the various welfare schemes announced by the government, resulting in liquidation of SPAs’ unsold inventory and debtors, according to a report by India Ratings & Research.

SPAs procure the stock of wheat and paddy from designated mandis and supply them to FCI for building its central pool. In FY16, stock in the central pool grew 7 percent to 36.7 million tonne (MT) before declining 15 percent in FY17.

Hindustan Times

With no signs of end to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the Punjab food and civil supplies department has decided to procure paddy in a staggered manner as it did during the rabi season that ended in June.

But the department is wary of using the rice mills as storage points fearing misappropriation of the stock and mixing of recycled rice with freshly shelled grain.

“Paddy poses a bigger challenge because the volume of the kharif crop is at least one-third more than wheat. Also, paddy arrives faster in the mandis (grain markets). An average 120 lakh tonnes of wheat arrives in mandis against 180 lakh tonne paddy,” an additional director-rank official said.

The Wire

In the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak, the wheat procured from Madhya Pradesh last month sent shockwaves through the state of Punjab.

For the first time, Punjab was no longer the largest wheat contributor to the central pool as MP delivered the highest quantity for a single season by any state (Table 1).

Agriculture economist S.S. Gill believes that a major implication of this development would be that Punjab will no longer be able to boast of its long revered status as the food bowl of India. However, Gill was also quick to raise a pertinent issue that the state had been struggling with for the past several years.