Media Monitor
Agriculture Industry
India has made rapid strides in improving malnutrition rates, says UNedit
Business Standard – Online
Rapid strides have been made by India in improving malnutrition rates said the UN recently and added that stunting in children below five years has declined from 48 percent to 38 percent in the country between 2006 and 2016. The government has large food security and anti-poverty programmes. With a five-fold increase in food grain production from 50 million tonnes in 1950-51 to about 250 million tonnes in 2014-15, India has moved away from dependence on food aid to become a net food exporter. In 2016, the government launched a number of programmes to double farmers’ incomes by 2022. These seek to remove bottlenecks for greater agricultural productivity, especially in rain-fed areas. They include the ...
Farmers in Andhra Pradesh Resist Fixing of Energy Meters to Farm Connectionsedit
Krishi Jagran – Online
Farmers in Gondipalli village, Rapthadu mandal, Anantapur district (Andhra Pradesh), protested against the installation of energy metres for agricultural connections beginning on Farmers’ Day on Saturday (Friday). On Saturday, a delegation from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the A.P. Rythu Sangham visited Gondipalli, where Rapthadu police stopped them from going to the location where the metres were being repaired. “The meter-fixing work began yesterday, and when farmers came out to protest, State police personnel prevented them from protesting.” All of this is being done to meet the World Bank’s requirements for power sector reforms in order to lend 1,000 crores,” said CPI(M) district secretary V. Rambhupal. Installation of metres on all agricultural service ...
Will raise farmers’ concerns at national meet: Dhaliwaledit
Hindustan Times – Online
Minister for rural development, panchayat and agriculture Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal on Saturday stated that he would raise the concerns of farmers whose fields are situated across the barbed fence along the Indo-Pak international border during the forthcoming national meeting on agriculture. The Union government is organising a meeting of agriculture ministers of all states in Bengaluru on July 14 and 15. As many as 30 state agriculture ministers along with Union agriculture ministers Narendra Singh Tomar and Shobha karandlaje will take part in the two-day meeting that will focus on initiatives to double farmers’ income and exchange best practices among states. The minister reached out to these farmers at the border in the Ajnala sub-division ...
Coverage
CLAAS invests in robotic start-upedit
Agri-View – Online
German agricultural-machinery manufacturer CLAAS has invested in a Dutch robotic start-up company to step into the autonomous-tractor market. The company has entered into a cooperative venture with AgXeed BV to acquire a minority shareholding in its international-funding round as a mark of their commitment. CLAAS recognizes the farming industry must further increase productivity in the decades ahead to meet the needs of a growing global population. But with the number of people employed in the industry continuing to decline, and skilled labor increasingly difficult to find, robotic machines can help alleviate those challenges in the future, according to the company. The agricultural-machinery industry has created various solutions to address those problems, ranging from operator-assistance and machine-optimization ...
Paddy in India
Paddy sowing: Punjab agri dept misses target to double area under DSR techniqueedit
Hindustan Times – Online
The Punjab agriculture department has failed to meet the target of doubling the area under the direct seeding of rice (DSR) technique for paddy sowing this kharif season against the last year’s 6-lakh hectare mark even as 90% of paddy sowing, including the aromatic premium variety basmati, is over in the state. With DSR, paddy seeds are sown directly with machine. The agriculture department had fixed a target to bring 30 lakh acres (12 lakh hectares) of paddy under the DSR technique during current kharif season, but the unconventional method of cultivation could cover only 82,500 hectares in the state. Experts, however, say the target was “exaggerated” and “unrealistic” as it was set without taking ...