The Hindu – Online

In the last year of its mission to double farmers income, the Centre admits that no actual assessment of farm income has been carried out since 2013.

Ashok Dalwai, head of the committee on doubling farmers income, told The Hindu that only the implementation of strategies is being monitored, rather than actual outcomes. He cautioned that the impact of the pandemic could have a dampening effect on reaching the income target.

In response to multiple pointed queries on the topic in Parliament this week, the government did not provide any details on what the base year for this goal is or what the targeted income to be achieved by the 2022 deadline is.

NRDC – Online

Valentine’s Day seems like a fitting time to talk about the benefits of regenerative agriculture. The love, care, and creativity our interviewees showcase every day and their commitment to regenerative philosophies, principles and practices yielded a breadth of benefits on and off the land. Some had just started their relationships with regenerative agriculture and others were decades in. Some were switching one practice at a time, and others dove into the deep end and transformed their entire landscape at once. The regenerative agriculture movement is reviving an Indigenous approach to agriculture and flipping the narrative to show how agriculture can help restore ecologies, fight climate change, rebuild relationships, spark economic development, and bring people—consumers AND farmers and ...

The Times of India – Online

Giving a fillip to the agricultural infrastructure in the state, chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami has inaugurated a number of warehouses in Villupuram, Kallakurichi and Cuddalore districts, laboratories and training centres at the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU), and market complexes in various districts. In all, the government had spent Rs 93 crore on the new infrastructure. According to a statement issued by the state government on Sunday, the warehouses with a capacity of 500 tonnes to 7,500 tonnes were built at a cost of Rs 45 crore. They were inaugurated by the chief minister on Saturday. These warehouses at Avalurpettai, Thirukovilur and Gingee in Villupuram district, Ulundurpet in Kallakurichi district, and Kurichinipadi and ...

The Hindu – Online

Agriculture must be handled by women as they would ensure food security of the nation through sustainable and environment-friendly practices, said Sheelu Francis, facilitator of Tamil Nadu Women’s Collective.

She was addressing a webinar on ‘One Billion Rising’, a campaign against violence against women and children, which was organised by EKTA Resource Centre for Women and other institutions.

Ms. Francis said women produced food through organic methods to feed her family. On the other hand, men focussed on earning money and hence produced food using fertilisers. “So, it is important that women have their own land to undertake agriculture,” she said.

Indian Express – Online

The existing impasse around the farmers’ protest against the farm laws continues despite the intervention by the Supreme Court. I’m not going to comment on the merits or demerits of the new farm laws or the issues involved. However, let’s try to understand it from the broader perspective of the whole economic ecosystem.

Agriculture had been the dominant sector of the economy since the dawn of civilisation, until its supremacy was replaced by the first three industrial revolutions beginning 250 years ago. The industrial revolutions were also accompanied by the emergence of capitalism and a market economy. The three industrial revolutions created huge job opportunities and helped with the assimilation of the agrarian workforce into the ...

Indian Express – Online

If I say that Indian agriculture has the potential to double or even triple its output in the next 15-20 years, many people will laugh it away. But the reality is that many countries have done it and we can do it, too, provided our agri-food policy framework takes a dramatic turn, from being subsidy-led to investment-driven, from being consumer-oriented to producer-oriented, and from being supply-oriented to demand-driven by linking farms with factories and foreign markets, and, finally, from being business as usual to an innovations-centred system. At least this is what we can learn from a comparative study of Indian, Chinese and Israeli agriculture in a just released book, From Food Scarcity to Surplus — ...

Indian Education Diary – Online

The Government of India, the Government of Chhattisgarh and the World Bank today signed a $100 million project to develop sustainable production systems that allow tribal households in remote areas of Chhattisgarh to practice round-the-year production of diversified and nutritious food.

While Chhattisgarh has made progress over the past two decades in reducing poverty as well as acute undernutrition, both continue to pose significant challenges. CHIRAAG – Chhattisgarh Inclusive Rural and Accelerated Agriculture Growth Project will be implemented in the southern tribal-majority region of the state where a large population is undernourished and poor. The project will benefit over 180,000 households from about 1,000 villages in eight districts of Chhattisgarh.

The New Indian Express – Online

Farmers under an integrated agri extension platform (IAEP) for chilli farm value chain development in public private partnership mode, have witnessed a 27 per cent increase in net returns, 12 per cent in crop production and eight per cent in high-grade production.The platform, put in place by the state department of horticulture, aims to produce high-quality chilli in view of the increasingly stricter norms being imposed by countries that import chilli from India. “The IAEP, an initiative in partnership with ITC, not only ensures improved quality, but also increased productivity,” said horticulture commissioner Chiranjeevi Chowdary, noting that Andhra Pradesh is the largest producer of chilli in India and more than three lakh farmers are ...