Harish Damodaran

Retail food inflation for December has touched a more than six-year high. When are prices likely to fall? And what could prevent that from happening? What steps can the government take?

NDDB not keeping a reserve stock of milk powder and butter has proved costly for both producers and consumers

Rice exporters alone are said to be stuck with receivables of Rs 800-900 crore against shipments made till June 2019.

2019 was extraordinary for crop damage caused by too much rather than too little rain. The prospects for rabi, however, look good.

The current protests are, by contrast, not confined to any particular community or sector. Their universality derives precisely from the fact that the economy is today faced with a general growth slowdown sparing no sector or industry.

Farm prices looking up, along with bumper rabi production, can set the stage for long overdue turnaround.

Contrast this to the period since 2010 before this government assumed office, which saw the MRP of full-cream milk in the Delhi-NCR market going up by Rs 18 per litre, while amounting to Rs 14 for toned milk.

What is striking is how quickly it has risen — from just 2.99 per cent in August to 5.11 per cent in September, 7.89 per cent in October to 10.01 per cent last month.

The daily wage rate in rural India for male workers across 25 occupations (12 agricultural and 13 non-agricultural) averaged Rs 331.29 during September, as per field data compiled by the Labour Bureau.

Govt plans to change existing law to ensure availability of quality seeds to farmers. How will the proposed Bill to replace The Seeds Act, 1966 meet its objective of ‘regulating quality of seeds for sale, import, export’?

The ongoing price recovery in major crops is in danger of being stymied by knee-jerk government response.

Unlike all the earlier downturns whose precursors/triggers were supply-side constraints in food and forex, macroeconomic imprudence or external shocks, what we are now experiencing is more of a ‘Western-style’ slowdown exacerbated by internal policy misadventures.

India’s sugar exports are set to hit a record high this year, providing some respite to the beleaguered industry.

Barring these two, exports of most commodities have taken a hit from global headwinds this year

Prices of most farm produce are looking up. That, together with the country’s best monsoon in 25 years, holds out some hope for the economy.

As per Commerce Ministry data, India’s vegetable oil imports were valued at Rs 69,023.79 cr in 2018-19 and Rs 27,972.27 cr during April-August 2019.

Out of the 1,646 fodder camps, the maximum were opened in Beed (549, with 3.49 lakh animals), Ahmednagar (507 and 3.34 lakh), Solapur (248 and 1.75 lakh) and Osmanabad (92 and 0.85 lakh) districts.

The main reason for rejecting the DCT (as opposed to DBT) option was the belief that paying market price for fertilisers upfront would result in additional financial burden.

It is the industry that is lobbying the hardest to keep its products out of the free trade agreement currently under negotiation among16 countries to India’s east and north. Why is this so?