Monsoon rains have covered most parts of cane, cotton, and soybean fields in western India and some parts of rice-sowing areas in central and northern India, the country's weather office said on Tuesday.Monsoon rain covers most parts of cane, cotton, soybean fields in India

NITI Aayog member Ramesh Chand on Tuesday said public perception of growing harmful effects of chemicals in food cannot be addressed by organic farming or zero budget farming alone. Chand said the plant protection industry should play an active role in assuring consumers that all chemicals aren’t harmful and must educate farmers to adopt good farm practices and stop excessive use of chemicals.

NEW DELHI: Making crop insurance voluntary to all farmers, removal of high premium crops, giving flexibility to states to provide customised add on products -- are some of the key changes the Centre is planning to make to the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), a senior government official said Monday

NEW DELHI: With water stress increasing in many parts of the country, the agriculture ministry and NITI Aayog are planning to carry out an extensive study on agricultural use of water which, in future, will help farmers opt for cultivation based on water consumption levels.

Since the mid-1990s, India has raised GDP per capita by more than 5% per year, cut the incidence of poverty in half, and significantly decreased undernourishment. India is one of the fastest growing G20 economies, largely reflecting an ambitious reform agenda launched in 2014. India has emerged as a major exporter of several agricultural commodities, and has also been diversifying production towards high value pulses, fruits, vegetables, and livestock products.

India should provide incentives to farmers to adopt efficient water use to avert a looming crisis, according to the Economic Survey presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in parliament. The South Asian nation should introduce improved irrigationNSE 1.47 % methods, use technologies and change cropping patterns to reduce the use of ground water, of which 89% is extracted for irrigation purposes, the survey said on Thursday.

Despite the annual Budget outlay increasing by about 144% since India’s first Budget in Nov 1947 to the interim Budget in February earlier this year, the status of the Indian farmer hasn’t improved considerably. The most ambitious strategic and action plan of the NITI Aayog is yet to be delivered at the grassroots level. Also, food adequacy and nutritional security at the farm household level in various parts of the country are cause for concern for planners.

As per CAG’s report for the year ended March 2018, the seed which was not notified for the state was distributed to the farmers, resulting in lesser yields. Amidst dismal performance of agriculture, the Comptroller & Auditor General of India (CAG) has castigated the state government for pitfalls in distribution of agricultural inputs to farmers for the period 2013-18. Even though several cases of misappropriation of money collected as farmers’ contribution by officials from beneficiaries were r

NEW DELHI: Minister of agriculture and farmers’ welfare, GoI, Narendra Singh Tomar on Tuesday asserted that while agriculture was the backbone of India, the cooperative movement is the soul of India. Tomar said this while jointly addressing a curtain raiser event along with minister of commerce & industry and railways, Piyush Goyal to announce the India International Cooperatives Trade Fair (IICTF) which will be held in New Delhi in October 2019.

Want the Budget to extend farmers' income transfer scheme; go for structural re-haul with better logistic, transportation and marketing system; strengthen farmers' financial withholding capacity with farms loans based on warehouse collateral

As per the offer, the committee would also examine various provisions of Essential Commodity Act (ECA), 1955 and suggest changes in the ECA to attract private investments in agricultural marketing and infrastructure. Government has set up a high-powered committee of chief ministers to deliberate and suggests ways to transform agriculture and raising of farmers' income following a directive from PM Narendra Modi at the governing council meeting of NITI Aayog last month.

The committee was set up to identify ways of advancing beekeeping in India that can help in improving agricultural productivity, enhancing employment generation.

The crop insurance scheme would be free of cost for the farmers since the government will pay the full premium.

India is witnessing the IoT revolution and is being deployed across various verticals including agriculture. With the advancement in technology at hand, the opportunities for IoT to revolutionise the agricultural sector is magnanimous. According to IoT India Congress 2018, Indian IoT market is expected to grow from $3 billion to $9 billion by 2020 across sectors such as telecom, health, vehicles, homes, entire cities and manufacturing floors and computers. The pace of India’s digital revolution

Kicking off the Budget consultations with agriculture experts and India Inc, as she prepares for her maiden Budget to be presented on July 5, Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, said that concerns of the farm sector are high on priority list of the government

Agricultural market reforms have been stuck in the middle for 15 years as it is a state subject. There is no doubt that the agrarian sector is in the grip of distress in general, and in some parts, even a crisis, due to various domestic and global factors. Many short-term relief and reform measures are being attempted to deal with this situation in the last couple of years at the Union and state level, ranging from loan waivers to direct cash payments across many states, besides the focus on do

As several industries reel under the impact of rural slowdown, raising farm productivity could be one step towards increasing the demand from the rural sector, according to one of the foremost agriculture economists. For achieving this, India needs to rev up its agri-GDP growth which is below the desirable level of 4% per annum, Ashok Gulati, Chair Professor at Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, wrote in The Indian Express today. “India has never had any major agri-

Development of rural areas is key to fighting global poverty and hunger, according to a former Georgian agriculture minister who is pitted in a four-cornered contest including one from India for UN Food and Agriculture Organising Director General. Elections for the UN FAO Director General for a four-year term beginning August 1 is slated to be held this month. The candidates running for this high-profile position are Qu Dongyu of China, Catherine Geslain-Lan饬le of France, Davit Kirvalidze of G

Income support schemes for farmers are in vogue and are threatening to aggravate the government’s fiscal stress, but these could become more than affordable if the various existing direct and indirect subsidies for agriculture are removed.

Agriculture must now become a sub-set of rural development if we intend to double farm incomes by 2022 Powered by a mammoth verdict from the vast hinterland of India despite a serious agrarian crisis, the first thing that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s new Cabinet did was to send a message to the farmers that he cared about them and was thankful for trusting him with their mandate. Ground reports have indicated that direct cash transfers had significantly swung the vote, topping a slew of other

Five decades after the green revolution, Down To Earth visited the village from where it all started, to assess the agrarian crisis situation there.India is going through one of the worst agrarian crisis in history. Farmers are in distress and the government is not doing much to help the situation

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has allocated key Agriculture and Farmer Welfare ministry to Narendra Singh Tomar, MP from Madhya Pradesh, to revive the farm sector in the country. The ministry holds significance as the government has promised to double the farmers' income by 2022 and there had been large-scale agitations across the country due to farm distress in the last few years

The new NDA government at the Centre is set to develop its governance agenda for the next five years. During the last five years, the agriculture sector and farmers were at the centre stage. In fact, in the just-concluded general elections, all the political parties raised issues on farmers’ conditions and agrarian distress. However, none was able to provide a long-term remedy to overcome the plight of the farming community. At the same time, much was done during the last five years by the NDA-2

The Green Agriculture project synergises biodiversity conservation, agriculture production, and development India is signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity. As four of the 35 biodiversity hotspots are located in India, it is biodiversity-rich. However, climate change and development without consideration for biodiversity are leading to loss of biodiversity.

NEW DELHI: The cabinet has approved a new procurement policy under which one scheme will focus on compensating oilseeds farmers if rates fall below the MSP, and another will allow states to rope in private players for procurement, sources said on Wednesday.

The party asked Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, which is going to the polls later this year, to present the resolution. Amid criticism from opposition parties in the face of farmers’ protests in several parts of the country, the BJP national executive on Saturday presented and passed a resolution on agriculture. The party highlighted the NDA government’s initiatives in the direction of doubling farmers’ income and expressed gratitude to Prime Minister Narendra Modi

To educate the farming community about the impact of burning paddy and wheat straw under the mission ‘Tandarust Punjab’, a village-level farmer awareness camp was organised by the Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare at Sanipur village here on Wednesday.

Nagpur: The state cabinet at its meeting held in Mumbai on Wednesday has given a go-ahead to a modernization and mechanism of farms scheme to be launched in the current fiscal. The scheme will be fully sponsored by the state as part of the government’s plan to double farm income by year 2022, says a note.

Ranchi: Chief minister Raghubar Das on Sunday sent a delegation of 26 farmers from 24 districts of Jharkhand on a four-day exposure visit to Israel to learn modern agriculture techniques. This is for first time in Jharkhand that any state government has sent a farmers' delegation on an exposure trip overseas.

The Vice President visited the farm fields and enquired about the practice of Zero budget natural way of farming at S.N. Palem village of Krishna District, Andhra Pradesh.

Trichy: The agriculture department has organised a capacity building training for director designates of Farmer Producers Company. More than 400 progressive farmers from across the seven zones falling in the districts including Trichy, Ariyalur and Pudukottai participated in the programme.

Trichy: The agriculture department has organised a capacity building training for director designates of Farmer Producers Company. More than 400 progressive farmers from across the seven zones falling in the districts including Trichy, Ariyalur and Pudukottai participated in the programme.

NEW DELHI: PM Modi said on Wednesday the country will soon have an ‘agriculture export policy’ so that Indian farmers can strongly compete in the global market. “Our granaries are full... but times have changed. Our farmers and agricultural methods should also be modern and more scientific. We want to bring value addition right from ‘beej se bazaar tak’ (seeds to market),” Modi said in his I-Day speech.

AHMEDABAD: A centre for excellence for potato-seed is all set to come up in Gujarat, through a collaboration between Indian and Dutch companies. The setting up of the centre for excellence is being facilitated by Netherlands Business Support Office (NBSO), with a view to helping produce better quality potatoes which which will help improve the yield per hectare of potatoes.

From seed banks to rainwater harvesting, one village on the Brahmaputra has spread innovative agriculture through the region – as farmers battle against worsening floods and droughts

Under then agriculture minister Rajnath Singh, in 2004 for the first time in the history of independent as well as colonial India, a National Commission on Farmers (NCF) was set up by the Government of India for looking into the problems of farm families and suggesting methods for making farming more remunerative as well as attractive to the younger generation.

Patna: Agriculture minister Prem Kumar on Tuesday directed field officials to generate awareness about the benefits of micro irrigation among farmers.

Cloudless sky and sowing Somewhere, in the hinterland of Andhra Pradesh (AP), its repercussions are being felt by tur farmers. As rain gods frown, their saplings are withering off due to lack of moisture in the soil. They look at the cloudless sky and pray, but they know the damage has already been done, so far as the productivity and quality of their crops were concerned. Murali Babu, general secretary, Federation of All India Farmer Association (FAIFA), expects the output of tur crop to

Taking a cue from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) Chairman on Thursday said he has a dream to more than double income of the country’s farmers.

Reforms on agri-marketing, contract farming, and land leasing apart from an aggressive export policy are what driving agri-growth requires.

In an election year with polls scheduled for Lok Sabha and several agrarian states, a bad monsoon could mean a turn in fortune for the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA)

Agriculture is not only crucial for what happens to growth, inflation and rural distress, it is also politically important given the simmering discontent among farmers in the last two years

The proposal to constitute the JWG was put forward by Israeli Minister for Agriculture, Uri Ariel, during his meeting with Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani yesterday.

In the next two years, ICRISAT will work in the state's dryland farming areas with 6,100 smallholder farmers, 2,000 of whom are women.

Minister says 590 village haats to be linked to eNAM, vows to work with stakeholders

According to an official note, Modi said, “A positive mindset and a ‘can-do’ spirit is now pervading the country. Therefore, corporate sector should invest in a big way, especially in agriculture sector.”

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Sunday said climate change has been affecting the state over the years and its impact is visible, with monsoon getting delayed every year and the volume of rain also showing a downward trend.

According to students, private universities that offer agriculture courses have not followed the state rules, nor the Indian Council for Agriculture Research rules.

Research and development in water-efficient crops, along with investment in alternative modes of irrigation, are a must

As per the decision taken during the 4th NITI Aayog Governing Council meeting held recently in New Delhi, the Centre has set up a Chief Ministers’ sub-group to coordinate policy approaches.