India: Subsidies for Drought-Hit Farmers

The majority of Indias farmers do not have access to irrigation facilities, so monsoon rains are vital for India's summer-sown crops including rice, sugarcane and soybeans. But this season India has received 29 percent less rainfall causing a drought-like situation.

India's Food and Agriculture Minister announced plans to increase power supply and subsidized diesel to farmers to help them overcome the impact of drought.

[Sharad Pawar, Indias Food and Agriculture Minister]:
We want to help the farmers. We are taking two or three steps like providing more electricity and diesel subsidies to the state government with an aim to help the farmers in producing the food grains.

The minister said that Indias sugar output for the season has not been promising and the government may ask mills to increase supply of low-priced sugar for public distribution.

Currently mills are forced to sell 10 percent of their output at low state-set prices, and this may be raised to 20 percent.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• ntd
• ntdtv
• News
• India
• Subsidies
• Drought-Hit
• Farmers
• irrigation
• monsoon
• rains
• rice
• sugarcane
• soybeans
• Agriculture

[allknowfather]

w w w . watchtower . org / e / 20010622 / article_02 . htm

[andrer2006]

Instead of giviing them more diesel and electricity, why dont you build some dams? One part of the state is flooding, and the other is under drought conditions. Is this really rocket science to figure out? BUILD DAMS!