Media Monitor
Agriculture Industry
Farmers stacking paddy and waiting for saleedit
DT Next – Online
In Mayiladuthurai district, in 4 talukas of Mayiladuthurai, Kuthalam, Tharangambadi and Sirkazhi, more than 70,000 acres have been cultivated by farmers through ground water and river irrigation. Currently, farmers are actively involved in the harvesting process. It is customary to open more than 100 purchasing centers in the Mayiladuthurai district annually for the purchase of paddy. But this year the procurement center has been opened in only 30 villages including Konerirajapuram and Sivanagaram. Farmers take the harvested paddy bundles to various government direct purchase outlets in the district for sale and store them. The farmers have therefore petitioned the District Collector Lalita that the government should immediately open direct paddy procurement centers.
Karnataka foresters turn farmers to help forest dwellers in paddy plantationedit
The New Indian Express – Online
In a unique gesture, the foresters from the Kali Tiger Reserve in Joida taluk of Uttara Kannada district helped the farming families in their agricultural activities. Amidst rains, about 20 men from the Kumbarwada wildlife division of the Reserve toiled an entire day at the agricultural fields. Two families were benefited in Mainold and Kalasai village that is part of Tiger Reserve and the foresters say this is one among several outreach programmes to ensure good relationships with the locals.
ITC opts for PPPs, technical collaborations to scale up social investment programmesedit
The Times Of India – Online
The Kolkata-headquartered conglomerate has forged 83 Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) with several state governments and government bodies, 24 technical collaborations with national and global organisations, and is working with 82 NGOs apart from thematic experts for village-based institutions and other partnerships. ITC is also working with NITI Aayog to improve agriculture and allied sectors in 27 aspirational districts of 8 states and has till date covered 2.5 million farmers. Additionally, it has institutionalised major agriculture practices in several states with the aim of reducing water use and cultivation costs and improving productivity to make agriculture more sustainable and climate-resilient.
Tamil Nadu: Agriculture sector is growing, but at a snail’s paceedit
The Times Of India – Online
Even as the state finances went through rough weather for more than a decade, agricultural sector provided some saving grace, registering steady growth in the past 15 years, but it is nothing great to rejoice, says the white paper on state finances released by finance minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan on Monday. He went on to say that industrial growth rate dipped between 2011 and 2016 and later climbed in the past five years. Services sector, on the other hand, has been steadily declining from 11.23% to 7.44% and later to 6.03%. The sectoral growth pattern reveals that overall, the services and secondary sectors recorded higher growth rates than the primary sector.
Budget
TN to become second state after Andhra with separate agri budget on Aug 14edit
Business Standard – Online
On August 14, Tamil Nadu will will become the second state after Andhra Pradesh to have a separate agricultural budget. While experts believe that this is nothing more than a political move, data available from Andhra Pradesh indicates that such a move might actually boost the sector. The tradition of having an exclusive budget for agriculture was started by Andhra Pradesh in 2012-13, in order to give a focused approach to the sector, terming it as a policy paper on agriculture. Though states like Telangana, Rajasthan and Bihar too had similar plans, they did not take off due to various legal and technical reasons.
Competition
M&M Q1FY22: New models’ demand high, tractor market share gain not at expense of margin, says managementedit
CNBC TV18 – Online
Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) reported strong earnings in the first quarter of the fiscal led by the tractor business which recorded its highest market share in the last 8 quarters. The company reported a profit for its first quarter on Friday before markets closed, as demand for the Indian automaker’s passenger vehicles and tractors improved. “It has not come at the expense of profitability because we have kept our pricing high. We took three price increases as well over the last year and we have managed to maintain our margins, obviously hit a little by commodity price inflation but overall the farm business had its best results ever in the first quarter with a PBIT ...
CSR and COVID Initiatives
Teachers plant paddy, send farmers for jabsedit
The Times Of India – Online
Vaccine ke liye kuchh bhi karega. Schoolteachers roped in by the Madhya Pradesh health department to motivate people to take the jab transplanted paddy for farmers and farm labourers in Dindori district after the beneficiaries said they would be able to go to the vaccine centre only after they are done with their work. The seedlings of hope were transplanted at Manikpur village in Shahpur, 380km east of Bhopal, on August 7. The teachers, doing their usual get-the-vaccine rounds, arrived at a vaccination booth in the village to find it empty. According to their records, at least 33 people were due for their second dose and there were many others who needed to ...
Technology in Agriculture
Netravali woman farmer uses tech to boost farm output, gets PM’s attentionedit
The Times Of India – Online
Pratibha Velip, a woman farmer from Netravali who has been using system of rice intensification (SRI) technology to grow paddy in her fields, got the opportunity on Monday to engage in a virtual interaction with PM Narendra Modi, who lauded her work, especially for using the new tech for cultivating several crops in addition to paddy. “We received training from the directorate of agriculture, and we are able to produce more yield by spending less money using those skills,” she told Modi. “A total of five acres of land is used in farming, and my husband and children help me cultivate the crop.” Velip has been successfully carrying out a coconut-based mixed cropping ...
Govt. Policies
Small farmers getting top priority in agricultural policies, efforts made to enhance their income: PMedit
Hindustan Times – Online
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said that now small farmers were getting the top priority in the country’s agricultural policies. Serious efforts had been made during the last few years to enhance the income of small farmers through various initiatives, he said. He was interacting with farmers after releasing the ninth instalment of ₹19,500 crore to 9.75 crore farmers under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) during a virtual function that UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath also attended here.
Monsoon + Indian Agriculture
Farmers worried due to dry spell, no rain in sight till Aug 15edit
The Indian Express – Online
With the dry spell in the state likely to stretch till this weekend, at the peak of the monsoon season, farmers, especially in Saurashtra, are worried about crops getting affected as dams and groundwater sources to irrigate their crops have not been replenished. Bapalal Parmar, a farmer of Kukda village in Muli taluka of Surendranagar district, has not been able to sow his 200 bigha holding and is worried that castor he sowed in 30 bigha will fail if it doesn’t rain soon. “There is no water in Wadhwan Bhogavo-I dam from which we get water through canal. Nor is there enough water in borewells on my farm. Therefore, presently I am irrigating cotton ...
Monsoon extremes likely to increase over India, South Asia: IPCCedit
Live Mint – Online
Monsoon extremes are likely to increase over India and South Asia, while the frequency of short intense rainy days are expected to rise, an IPCC report on climate change said on Monday. Models also indicate a lengthening of the monsoon over India by the end of the 21st century, with the South Asian Monsoon precipitation projected to increase, said the Sixth Assessment Report of the IPCC, approved by 195 member countries.
Stubble Burning
Explained: Why The Rise In Methane Levels Is Worryingedit
India Spend – Online
Human-caused methane emissions largely stem from three sectors: fossil fuel production and consumption (35% of human-caused emissions), waste (20%) and agriculture (40%), per UNEP. Methane is emitted during the extraction and production of fossil fuels including oil, gas and coal. In agriculture, methane emissions can come from burning crop stubble after harvest and continuous flooding of paddy fields for rice production. Decomposing organic material in waste discarded by humans also produces methane. It is also a byproduct of digestion in cattle. India, with its huge cattle population, is the world’s third-largest emitter of methane, according to a March 2019 paper by Veera Pekkarinen, supported by the European Union’s ClimaSlow project.
Tractor industry
Auto component maker Sansera Engineering gets Sebi’s go ahead to launch IPOedit
Business Standard – Online
Auto component maker Sansera Engineering Ltd has received capital markets regulator Sebi’s go-ahead to float an initial share sale. The initial public offer (IPO) is entirely an offer for sale (OFS) of 17,244,328 equity shares by promoters and existing shareholders, according to the draft red herring prospectus (DRHP). In the non-automotive sector, Sansera Engineering manufacture and supply precision components for the aerospace, off-road, agriculture and other segments, including engineering and capital goods.