Civil Service Bytes

The story of agriculture, which is the backbone of the country in terms of livelihoods, has not been good in the past two years. Agriculture GDP (gross domestic product) grew at (-)0.2% in 2014-15 and 1.1% in 2015-16. The distress in agriculture is due to two factors—first, the crash in global commodity prices and, second, deficit rainfall for two years in a row; 10 states have declared drought this year. These two factors have affected farmers’ incomes. Low agriculture growth also affects the prospects of manufacturing and services due to forward and backward linkages. For example, tractor sales have declined. In this context, a big push for the agriculture sector is needed in the forthcoming budget. A two-pronged strategy is required for agriculture: raising productivity and incomes of farmers and coping with risks due to climate change and the crash in commodity prices. The following measures are needed in the budget to revive the sector. First, increase in productivity can be ...

Full text of Address of Shri Radha Mohan Singh is as follows:             "Honorable entrepreneurs, educationists, researchers and all the invitees in this Agriculture Trade Summit associated with agriculture and rural enterprises. Today, I am feeling extremely happy to grace this occasion that this platform is jointly being used to deliberate upon various aspects of entrepreneurship development and innovative efforts made in this field of agriculture. I hope that the outcome emerged out after deliberations, debates and discussions during the summit shall result into the joint development of agriculture, rural and entrepreneurs. This kind of event and platform is one of the effective steps for the development of the States in all sectors of agricultural enterprises and to identify the constraints being faced in agri-entrepreneurship and future challenges. Undoubtedly,  This forum would provide the opportunity by integrating...

Present day conventional method of rice cultivation utilises 5,000 litres of water for producing one kg of rice than its actual requirement of 3,000 litres. About 2,000 litres is lost due to flooding and seepage losses. Further, decline in water table necessitates the need for improved water-use efficiency and water productivity in agriculture, particularly in rice cultivation. Thus, the newly upcoming approach of rice cultivation called aerobic rice cultivation reduces water use in rice production and increases the water use efficiency. In simple words, growing rice plant as irrigated crop like cultivating maize and wheat in aerobic condition, where oxygen is plenty in soil. The suitable areas for aerobic rice cultivation includes irrigated lowlands, where rainfall is insufficient to sustain rice production, delta regions where there is delay in water release from reservoir, irrigated system of rice cultivation, where pumping from deep bore well has become so expensive an...

The government will launch the much-talked about new crop insurance scheme, which aims to keep a lower premium for farmers and faster settlement of claims, in 2016-17. Under the proposed crop insurance scheme, the premium to be charged from farmers will be kept lower and focus will be on early settlement of claims. New technologies, including drones, will be used to assess crop damage faster, he said. Currently, farmers have to pay premium ranging from 4 to 15 per cent to insure crops. Example: the case of Lalitpur in Uttar Pradesh’s Bundelkhand region, where the actual premium for paddy is 22 per cent of the sum insured and farmers have to pay a premium as high as 5.75 per cent. New Crop Insurance Scheme through which it will bring down the rate of premium to be paid by farmers to a maximum of 2.5 per cent of the sum insured. The remaining premium will be paid by the Centre and the state governments . It has estimated the expenditure at Rs 8,000 crore if ...