Harish Damodaran

These wholesale rates at mandis in major producing centres are well below the Centre’s minimum support price (MSP) of Rs 5,100 per quintal.

ICAR develops feed supplement that reduces emissions and also boosts milk production.

On Friday, the Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) issued an order to impose stockholding limits on all pulses, barring moong or green gram, for a period up to October 31, 2021.

The global oil price hike has been passed on to Indian consumers. Will that happen with food too? Currently, food inflation is relatively low in India. A look at factors that could influence what you pay in coming months.

PDS offtake, procurement, warehouse stocks, and foodgrain exports hit highs in the last one year. Abundant farm produce and government initiatives enabled these even amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

The economy saw its worst-ever contraction in 2020-21, but the farm sector actually grew by 3.6%. In the second year of the Covid-19 pandemic, however, farmers face new challenges and uncertainties.

The government has hiked the subsidy on DAP fertiliser by 137%. A look at the political and economic compulsions that led to the move after fertiliser manufacturers had hiked retail prices.

Companies have been requested “to keep the reasonableness of their profits and not increase the prices”, Aparna S Sharma, joint secretary in the department of fertilisers, has said in a communication to the industry.

Thanks to surplus grain, exports in a pandemic year crossed 13 mn tonnes for rice, an all-time high, and 2 mn tonnes for wheat, the highest since 2014-15

The farm sector’s standout export performance, the best since the $43.25 billion of 2013-14, was thanks to a good monsoon, agriculture production being relatively unaffected by the Covid-19-induced lockdown, and surging global commodity prices.

While 10.35 crore PM-JAY Cards have been issued since the launch of ‘the world’s largest health assurance scheme’ in September 2018, it has proved to be of little use in the ongoing Covid-19 epidemic.

The irony is that the section more prone to infecting others would also be low-income people, who cannot ordinarily afford the vaccine.

Most government welfare schemes are aimed at poverty alleviation and uplifting those at the bottom of the pyramid. But there’s no policy for those in the “middle” and in danger of slipping to the bottom.

Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative (Iffco) Wednesday raised its maximum retail price (MRP) for DAP from Rs 24,000 to Rs 38,000 per tonne.

A 50-kg bag of di-ammonium phosphate (DAP), the most widely consumed fertiliser in India after urea, will cost farmers Rs 1,900, more than 58 per cent higher than the existing rate of Rs 1,200/bag.

In rural India, the National Food Security Act of 2013 – which entitles three-fourths of all households to 5 kg of wheat or rice per person per month at Rs 2 and Rs 3 per kg, respectively – has reduced the demand for millets.

The fear is of large-scale imports once the market is fully opened up: EU is the world’s biggest producer (103.5 lt out of a total 212.22 lt in 2020) as well as exporter (9.31 lt out of 21.62 lt) of cheese.

Half of IARI’s divisions — including biochemistry, plant pathology, entomology, nematology, microbiology, agricultural physics, agricultural chemicals and agricultural economics — are headed by women.

That’s good news for the economy when agriculture is the only sector expected to grow by 3 per cent amid an overall 6.5 per cent contraction in 2020-21 -- and for the NDA government facing unrelenting protests over its farm reform laws.

Oil marketing firms set to procure record amount to blend with petrol

All across India, dairies have reported milk price increases over the past couple of months. These increases are partly attributed to global factors.

At the projected economic cost of Rs 29.94/kg for wheat and Rs 42.94/kg for rice, the corresponding per-kg PDS consumer subsidy in the coming fiscal would work out to Rs 27.94 and Rs 39.94, respectively.

It is the rural middle class — which experienced a roughly four-decade spell of prosperity from the 1970s and now has its back to the wall — that’s at the forefront of the agitation against the farm reform laws.

In November 2009, the then government withdrew a law that took away the powers of states to fix cane prices within hours of a farmer protest at Jantar Mantar.