Spread the love       Neat rows of vegetable and fruit plants in a portion of the 4.50-hectare agricultural land, a 3.3-KV solar power panel running pumps and other electrical appliances, slim polyethylene hoses for drip irrigation, and uniformly spaced trees form part of some innovative practices adopted by farmer Bhanwar Lal Meel at Lalasi village in Rajasthan’s Sikar district. Mr. Meel,...

Spread the love       Amid an extended ban on onion exports, farmers and traders are miffed that some shipments allowed by the government to markets like the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have been sold at a pittance, even as global prices have soared, yielding windfall profits for selected importers. An Indian farmer is being paid just ₹12 to ₹15 rupees for...

Spread the love      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 the farmers. It...

Spread the love      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 28.44 million hectares....

Spread the love       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 at 40%...

Spread the love       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 and unseasonably...

Spread the love      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 MSP. While the...

Spread the love       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 fixed at...

Spread the love      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 developed countries. In...