Media Monitor
Agriculture Industry
India to pitch for permanent solution for food security in WTO meetedit
Business Standard – Online
India will pitch for finding a permanent solution to the issue of public stockholding for food security at the upcoming 12th ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) that will kick start from November 30, said officials on Wednesday. “Now that the 12th meeting is approaching, a number of submissions are being made at the WTO for advancing negotiations in agriculture. India, along with the G-33 (group of nations), has been engaging in finding a permanent solution to the public stockholding issue,” one of the officials cited above said. India is hopeful of a positive outcome on public stockholding and domestic support, which are part of the negotiations. It believes that ...
CLAAS Global Mentions
CLAAS of America Adds Game-Changing Hydraulics to the JAGUAR and PICK UP Headeredit
Hay & Forage Grower – Online
The newly refined CLAAS PICK UP head, designed for the JAGUAR forage harvester, features a variable, independent drive of the intake auger and pick-up reel that reduces fuel costs and improves pickup capacity. The redesigned header takes an existing pickup reel and adds a new hydraulic drive, giving it greater adaptability in the field. This allows the pickup reel to be adjusted automatically to the ground speed to match the harvest conditions in the field and the auger speed adjusted automatically to the feed roll speed. In challenging harvest conditions, both speeds can be adjusted manually from the cab, allowing even more accurate crop feeding and consistent crop flow overall. In order ...
Competition
Will Kubota increase its stake in Escorts?edit
Forbes – Online
The buzz on the street is that the country’s fourth-largest tractor manufacturer is likely to consider a preferential issue to Kubota Corporation of Japan—which already owns over 9% of the company—at a board meeting convened today. According to market sources, Kubota may acquire up to a 15% stake in the company. As per current rules, an open offer will be triggered only if the acquirer hits a 25% stake. Incidentally, the Japanese major had acquired a stake in Escorts in 2020 through a preferential allotment, and since then it has shown a keen interest in the company after their joint venture (Escorts Kubota India) began production of tractors last year. Escorts Kubota, a 60:40 joint ...
Technology in Agriculture
Remotely operated farm equipment to improve productivity & operator safety: Tata Elxsiedit
Financial Express – Online
The automotive industry has seen some drastic changes to trends and technology in the past decade and so are improvements in digital technology opening a new chapter in the off-highway vehicles industry, especially in the case of sensors, robotic automation, and data. The use of more sophisticated tech in vehicles used in the agriculture or mining or construction industries can also make way for machine learning and AI applications and hence improve efficiency and eventually make a move on to autonomous vehicles for these purposes. We got in touch with Shaju S, Vice President & Head, Transportation Business at Tata Elxsi for more. Enterprises must keep up with the growing demand for ...
Venkaiah Naidu says tech must focus on agricultureedit
The Times of India – Online
Vice President Venkaiah Naidu said the Bengaluru Tech Summit should focus on technology that can be implemented in agriculture, which continues to be the source of livelihood for millions of Indians.“The sector is facing turbulence,” he said, while speaking at the opening ceremony of the 3-day event. “There are challenges, and a lot of changes are happening because of climate change.” A 1-2 degrees celsius rise in temperature is likely to decrease rice production by about 0.75 tonnes per hectare in inland zones and 0.06 tonnes per hectare in coastal regions. Agriculture in the country is largely dependent on the four-month monsoon season, which has become erratic over the last few years. The ...
Efforts on to adopt new technology in agriculture: Tomaredit
Lokmat – Online
Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar said on Wednesday that over 10,000 Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) are being set up across the country to adopt new technology in agriculture in a big way with an eye on farmers economic benefit. The minister said that the FPOs would support the farmers in various aspects, ranging from input procurement to market linkages and promotion of their products. Earlier this year, the Central government had approved and launched the central sector scheme of ‘Formation and Promotion of FPOs’ to form and promote 10,000 new FPOs till 2027-28 with a total budgetary outlay of Rs 6,865 crore. “For the socio-economic development of the northeastern states and the region’s all-round development, ...
Ministry of Agriculture backed Startup IG Drones is helping farmers to boost income using Drone Geospatial Dataedit
Lokmat – Online
The RAFTAAR Scheme since its inception has empowered several startups in India including – India’s Leading Enterprise Drone Solution Provider, for its agri-tech solution that operates at scale and focuses on lowering farming costs. Today, agriculture is one of the fastest-growing markets in the commercial drone industry. The Indian agri-tech ecosystem has the potential to attract investments of over $10 billion over the next ten years, according to a FICCI-PwC report. A report by PWC India further states that the drone space is expected to grow at a CAGR of 18% during 2017-23. The past few years have seen a rapid emergence of ag-specific drone solutions. The use of drones in agriculture has made several ...
Govt. Policies
The role of state policy in our acute smog crisisedit
Mint – Online
India’s apex court had sharp words of reproach on Wednesday for how Delhi’s air was being discussed on airwaves, especially the role of farm stubble set aflame every year around this time. In the haze of all the blame sharing for pollution that envelops the crisis, the role crying out for both clarity and attention is that of state policy. Dense clusters of post-harvest fires in our northern rice belt at this point on the calendar can partly be traced to a crop timetable set by Punjab in 2009, aimed at conserving groundwater by getting paddy to guzzle as much monsoon rain as possible. This pushes all sowing into a tight common band, causing a ...
Monsoon + Indian Agriculture
Mancherial: Unseasonal rains spell ruin for paddy farmersedit
The Hans India – Online
Paddy growers are suffering huge losses the continuous rains. The paddy which was drying in the fields and at market yards is drenched in the rain. Farmers who have been waiting for the 20 days to sell their produce at government procurement centres are much worried over the impending losses. Due to the negligence by marketing authorities, procurement operations have not begun in right earnest. Last year the procurement had begun by this time. This year there is no clarity yet whether the government would buy the paddy or not. The continuous rains on November 14-17 caused misery to farmers in Gollapalli, Jogapur, Ghanpur, Mailaram under Nennela mandal and many villages under Luxittipet, ...
2021 monsoon shows impact of climate change. Here’s what it’s doing to kharif cropsedit
ThePrint – Online
As per the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 6th assessment report on global climate change, monsoons in India are likely to face, inter alia, (i) increase in the frequency and duration of dry spells, and (ii) intensified monsoon extremes particularly in central India (IPCC 2021). The monsoons of 2021, normal in volume but erratic in pattern, corroborate this prediction. Besides, the government of India has also acknowledged the impact of climate change on Indian monsoons, recently. With 50 percent of India’s gross cropped area (GCA) of 200 million hectares (Mn. ha) (2017-18) still depending on monsoon rains for meeting irrigation needs (DES, GOI), such climactic vagaries are disconcerting news not just for India’s commitment for ...
Rain bane for Odisha’s harvested paddy cropedit
The New Indian Express – Online
Hopes of many farmers in Sundargarh district have been washed away with the recent untimely rains leaving harvested paddy crops stacked on fields exposed to water. Affected farmers of Kiralaga, Hamirpur and Chhatasargi villages of Subdega block alleged that their wet paddy crops now have either turned black or started germinating after being exposed to sunlight. Their hopes of selling paddy in next few weeks have been dashed, they rued. Rasbihari Sahu of Jakeikela in Bonai block said he and other farmers suffered crop damage from the unseasonal rains between Saturday and Monday. As paddy crops were ready for harvest and the weather was clear, they resorted to crop cutting only too. Agriculture authorities ...
Paddy in India
Telangana farmers at their wit’s end over alternative crop plan for paddyedit
The Times of India – Online
Farmers in the state are at their wits’ end because the sowing season for alternate crops has already passed. The agriculture department devised a plan in which farmers are encouraged to cultivate sunflower, groundnut and red gram as alternative crops. Surprisingly, only 600 acres was under paddy, with the rest planted in food crops such as maize. Nagarkurnool district had the distinction of most farmland brought under cultivation (1.49 lakh acres). Farmers who want to cultivate other crops, on the other hand, are concerned because the sowing season for those crops is over. “We are also concerned that if we plant crops like groundnut, we will lose money because the price will ...
Punjab: Happy with water-saving ways of paddy cultivation, say farmers after switchedit
The Times of India – Online
The farmers who used water-saving alternative techniques for cultivating paddy have got almost equal produce as those who followed the conventional puddling method. If there has been a slight drop in the output, farmers said, they saved even more on input costs. These farmers also advocate banning of puddling, arguing that as alternative techniques have been tested with good results, overexploitation of water should be banned. Amritsar’s Jagdev Kalan village’s Amarjit Singh said that he used the dry puddling technique, promoted by former district agriculture officer Daler Singh, both for paddy and basmati and his production was more than those who used traditional puddling. “Even as due to strong wind my standing crop ...
Stubble Burning
Punjab: Farm fires near 69k-mark, experts blame long-duration paddy varietiesedit
The Indian Express – Online
With stubble burning cases inching towards the 69,000 mark this year in Punjab, experts are blaming long-duration varieties for rising farm fires and for also taking a huge toll on the state’s ground water. The districts where longer varieties are grown are mostly the ones where more stubble fires are reported. The long varieties provide less time to manage stubble through in-situ and ex-situ methods. Ideally farmers need 20 to 25 days between paddy harvesting and wheat sowing to manage the stubble properly, but with the long varieties this time is reduced to 5 to 10 days. Though the state has decreased the overall area under long duration varieties to just 18 per ...
Ordeal by fire: After slow start, stubble burning in Punjab at 5-year highedit
The Times of India – Online
All hopes that the harvest-stubble burning would decrease after the measures taken to curb it have been belied by satellite imagery data which puts the number of farm fires in Punjab this year between September 1 and November 16 at 74,015, the highest count since 2016 for the period. Data from NASA’s VIIRS-SNPP satellite put the number of fires in 2016 at 84,886 and in the following years at 72,373 in 2020, 40,528 in 2019, 51,998 in 2018 and 46,752 in 2017. The fire count in Haryana shows a similar trend. This year, in the two-and-half months between September 1 and November 16, there were 8,879 stubble fires, the number last year ...
Stubble fires go past 2020 tally, rise four-fold since November 1edit
Hindustan Times – Online
The number of fires in farmlands in Punjab this year has surpassed last year’s tally to become the highest since 2016, and taken together with the incidents recorded in Haryana, the instances recorded this month are four times that seen till the end of October. Data from SAFAR, accessed by HT, shows that contribution of farm fires to PM2.5 levels in Delhi has ranged from 6% to 48% in November. On an average basis, this comes to 23% although the contribution of farm fires to Delhi’s PM2.5 levels has come down in the last few days. From November 14 to November 17, its contribution was 12%, 10%, 8% and 6%. The farm fire analysis ...
Delhi air pollution: Stubble burning debate simmersedit
The Indian Express – Online
Heat from the stubble burning debate was felt in the Supreme Court Wednesday as the Centre attempted to explain why it had stated on the previous date of hearing that the contribution of crop burning to Delhi’s air quality was 4 percent, and the top court stating that it was not misled when it said stubble burning did not appear to be the major cause of air pollution in the national capital. As soon as the bench of Chief Justice of India N V Ramana, Justices D Y Chandrachud and Surya Kant assembled, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said: “I have to say something at the outset… I heard some irresponsible and nasty utterances ...