Warehousing act, Mechanisation and Alternative farming

1. Business-Standard has put up an interview with Anil Choudhary, managing director of the National Bulk Handling Corporation (NBHC), the warehousing, assaying, grading and certifying arm of the country’ largest commodity exchange the Multi Commodity Exchange of India (MCX). He says that the Warehousing Act will ensure liquidity to farmers against their produce.

"it will address one of the major woes of an average Indian farmer, that is, getting liquidity against his produce. Various micro and macro level studies indicate that small farmers contribute over 50 per cent of marketable surplus and ironically, more than half of it comes through distress sale.

"One of the major contributing factors has been the lack of viable alternatives to bring in liquidity against commodities by selling it immediately after harvesting when the prices are virtually the lowest."

2. Punjab Government is all set to put more automation in agriculture. Balwinder Singh Sidhu, Director, Agriculture, says, “The state government is providing subsidy on about 22 different kinds of machines which deal primarily with precision farming, residue management and diversification. While for precision farming we have laser levellers, for diversification, automatic potato planter, maize thresher and potato digger are required. Precision farming also depends on rotary power weeder and tractor-operated hydraulic sprayer.”

3. An alternative to chemical and organic farming: natural farming with zero budget. The fundamental idea of Zero Budget Natural Farming, as the name implies, is to increase yield by slashing cost and inputs. Fertilisers - both chemical and organic are a strict no-no, you don’t depend on the market for seeds (you use local seeds instead), and this mode of farming needs only 10 percent of the conventional requirement of water and electricity,