Amid the heat of the ongoing Lok Sabha electioneering, the Centre has announced plans to significantly increase wheat purchase from non-traditional States of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar and set a target of seven-fold jump in procurement to 50 lakh tonnes in the ongoing 2024-25 marketing year. Further, even as the ban on outbound shipments...
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Guaranteed MSP is an ethical imperative
As the general elections draw closer, agrarian concerns have once again taken centre stage. Farmers from the heartland of the Green Revolution have travelled to the border of the capital to not only voice their distress, but also to shape the electoral discourse. The ruling dispensation, sensing adverse electoral implications, attempted to reach out to...
Centre estimates dip in onion, potato production this year
Fruit and vegetable production in the country can touch 355.25 million tonnes (MT) in 2023-24, according to the first advanced estimates of area and production of horticultural crops released by the Union Agriculture Ministry on Thursday. The area of production will be 28.77 million hectares. The final estimates for 2022-23 stand at 355.48 MT in...
India sugar crop woes create opportunity for Al Khaleej refinery
Dubai’s Al Khaleej Sugar aims to lift output at its sugar refinery this year, with competition from India curtailed by bad weather in the South Asian country, its MD said on Tuesday. Jamal Al Ghurair said on the sidelines of the annual Dubai sugar conference that its refinery at Jebel Ali in Dubai was operating...
Wheat, rapeseed crops ravaged by rain days before harvesting
Untimely rainfall and hailstorms have battered winter-sown crops, including wheat, rapeseed, and chickpeas, delaying harvesting, industry and government officials told Reuters. Adverse weather could limit growth in wheat production and complicate the government’s efforts to build stocks. This year’s wheat harvest is critical for India, the world’s biggest producer of the grain after China. Hot...
Should Minimum Support Price be legalised?
On February 13, groups of farmers began a march to New Delhi, to press for fulfilment of their demands, which include a legal guarantee for purchasing crops at Minimum Support Price (MSP) and India’s withdrawal from the World Trade Organization (WTO) which, they allege, places pressure on the Centre for drafting policies for procurement and...
Centre announces ₹24,420 crore subsidy for summer crop fertilizers
The Union Cabinet, on Thursday, approved the Nutrient Based Subsidy (NBS) rates for the upcoming Kharif season on Phosphatic and Potassic (P&K) fertilizers and to include three more fertilizer grades under the NBS scheme. The Centre said tentative budgetary requirements for the scheme would be about ₹24,420 crore. The subsidy on Nitrogen (N) has been...
G-33 nations urge WTO members to find a permanent solution to public stockholding issue
The G-33 group of countries on February 25expressed serious concern over the lack of progress in agriculture trade negotiations and urged the members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to work on a permanent solution to the issue of public stockholding of grains for food security purposes. The G-33 group includes 47 developing and least...
Don’t consider our discipline and preference for dialogue as weakness: RSS farmers body tells government
The Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS) — a farmers’ body affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) — has condemned the violent protests by some farm unions who are demanding guaranteed minimum support prices (MSP), but it also rebuked the BJP-led Union government for not paying heed to the farmers’ pleas. The BKS warned the government...
PM Modi lauds role of cooperatives in farmers’ welfare
Cooperatives have the potential to tackle the personal issues of farmers with collective strength, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said while inaugurating multiple key initiatives for the cooperative sector here on Saturday. The Prime Minister inaugurated the pilot project of “world’s largest grain storage plan” in cooperative sector, which is being done in 11 Primary Agricultural...
