The Indian Express – Online

The minimum daily wages paid to agricultural labourers in Gujarat have been raised by 82.1 percent to Rs 324.2 per day, Dilipkumar Thakor, minister for labour and employment told the state legislature on Monday.

“The minimum wages paid in the agriculture sector was Rs 178 per day. Every five years it is reviewed. On January 1, 2021, we released a new notification according to which the minimum wages was raised to Rs 268 and a for the first time in Gujarat we started paying a on-hand allowance of Rs 56.20 per day“, the minister said In response to a question asked by Congress MLA Imran Khedawala who pointed out that the highest minimum wages in ...

The Tribune – Online

The state government has extended the subsidy scheme on anti-hail nets to agriculture. Until now, the scheme was available only for horticulture. “Under this scheme, the farmers will get 80 per cent subsidy on hail nets for 5,000 square meter area,” said agriculture subject matter specialist KK Singh.

He said the farmers doing multi-cropping, including both horticulture and agriculture, too, could avail the scheme. In the absence of anti-hail nets, many crops such as peas, cabbage, tomatoes and cauliflower etc suffer huge losses in the event of inclement weather, said KK Singh.

The farmers would need to apply to the department along with documents related to land and their Aadhaar Card. “Farmers should not purchase the ...

The Assam Tribune – Online

Water is vital for life on Earth and yet the value of this finite resource is perhaps the least considered. It is easier to visualize the trauma of one gasping for breath, for obvious reasons, but not the slow agony of those without adequate water. Our citizens remain oblivious to the significance of a ‘water value’ even though India ranks among the most water scarce countries. Worse still, a majority are unaware of conservation protocols in the face of an impending crisis of water in areas of current abundance.

The theme for the World Water Day 2021 is ‘Valuing Water’. The UN has elaborated that water means different things to different people. In households, schools ...

Hindustan Times – Online

The Nagaland government has begun work on an innovative model of cluster agricultural development, Naga Model Integrated Settled Farming (NISF).

The pilot project was launched at Boke-Botsa under Kohima district, where eight departments and a public undertaking – agriculture, sericulture, horticulture, animal husbandry and veterinary science, water resources, fishery and aquatic resources, land resources, soil and water conservation, and the Nagaland beekeeping and honey mission – are converging for the first time to work with the village community.

OpIndia – Online

The same old rhetoric of ‘farms will be sold to 4-5 big conglomerates’, ‘farmers will be rendered landless and exploited at the hands of few private players’ is being pushed forward by the kisan andolan leaders. The farmers agitating and holding Punjab and parts of Haryana and UP to ransom seem to be upset with farmers income doubling through open market and formalized contractual farming.

The fear mongering has made the farmers to believe that the private companies will take over their land. So let’s understand which section of the Farm Laws allows a company to buy a farmers land. Well the answer is none. There is no such provision in the Laws which enables a company to own ...

Krishi Jagran – Online

Small farmers having less than 2-3 hectares of land cannot depend solely on farming for income. They depend on labour supply from their household members, and other works too. Another option they have to increase their income is contract farming, but it is not possible for every small farmer to get the opportunity of contract farming.

Then comes the livestock sector for increasing the income. The livestock sector alone can provide alternative livelihood options to over 70 million small and marginal farmers.

We have resources, we have facilities but still, India’s agricultural exports are hardly $40 billion per year. We can boost our annual farm shipments and dairy shipments in the near future.

The Pioneer – Online

At the Trade Policy Review (TPR) meeting held at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in January, India insisted that a permanent solution for public stockholding to serve the food security objective special safeguard measures (SSMs) to prevent import surges and elimination of unfair farm subsidy entitlements of some members should be taken up on a priority basis for any farm deal that may be worked out at the 12th WTO Ministerial Conference (MC-12) scheduled to be held from November 29.

For about two decades, India has been taking up at the WTO these core agriculture issues that are of concern to developing countries, under what has come to be known as the Doha Development Agenda (DDA). However, it ...