Full Coverage: Agriculture

30.12.2005 Moreover, all member countries have finalised sensitive lists that protect vulnerable domestic producers. The tariff reduction mandated under SAFTA will not apply on items on countries’ respective sensitive lists. India, for instance, has kept 884 tariff lines in its sensitive list for non-LDCs and 763 items inthe list for LDCs. India’s sensitive list mainly includes agricultural goods, textiles, chemicals, leather and goods reserved for small scale industries.

29.12.2005 The government has ratified SAFTA and endorsed a tariff liberalization plan (TLP) which will drop prices of Indian as well as other South Asian goods from the next fiscal year.

29.12.2005 After being in dither for over a week, the government finally yielded to fertiliser importers’ demand, albeit partially, and decided to release Tk 66 crore in subsidy to the importers as their strike triggered a countrywide fertiliser crisis that threatened boro cultivation.

29.12.2005 In Dorli village in Wardha, farmers simply put up signs announcing their whole village was for sale. It worked, with the local MP giving them Rs.10 lakh. Eslewhere, despair only deepens. Farm suicides have begun in rich Western Maharashtra, too.

28.12.2005 Onions, which were being sold for Rs 1,200 per quintal in Maharashtra’s wholesale markets in October, are now fetching only Rs 300 per quintal with the arrival of the Kharif and late Kharif crops.

27.12.2005 Public investments which boost yields are falling thanks to rising subsidies, while the rising private investments actually reduce yields, through lowering of the water table, for instance.

27.12.2005 The Federal Minister for Commerce Humayun Akhtar Khan has said that end in agricultural subsidy and duty tariffs on cotton products as initiated by WTO, would greatly benefit Pakistan.

27.12.2005 As against the target of constructing 3,000 km of agricultural roads in two decades under the Agriculture Perspective Plan (APP), only 300 km of agricultural roads have been constructed in a decade, a newspaper report said

27.12.2005 The World Food Programme (WFP) will continue to support improving immediate access of rural households to health, education and agricultural services in food insecure areas in 2006.

27.12.2005 Loss of livelihood is typically the key shock factor that then generates a process that culminates in greater hunger and malnourishment.

26.12.2005 War on Want fights poverty in developing countries in partnership and solidarity with people affected by globalisation. It campaigns for workers' rights and against the root causes of global poverty, inequality and injustice. Read the WTOlog by War on Want's Media Officer John Coventry.

23.12.2005 The European Commission has authorised genetic contamination in organic agriculture, clearly putting the biotech industry before organic farmers and consumers, say campaigners.

23.12.2005 It was in the year 1997 that the phenomenon of suicides by Indian farmers emerged. Since then it has assumed frightening proportions and till now more than 25,000 farmers have taken their own lives. Only the other day a member of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly threatened to immolate himself in the house itself and a few days later, the news came that farmers in a particular village near Nagpur were preparing their own funeral pyres to immolate themselves

23.12.2005 A National Human Rights Commission report says that the number of child labourers in UP has seen an increase, the first since around 70,000 bonded children were freed at the behest of the Supreme Court in 1997.

23.12.2005 Finance Minister P. Chidambaram favourd decontrol of both sugar and sugarcane prices simultaneously. Speaking on the occasion of 71st AGM of Indian Sugar Mills Association (ISMA) he said: "It appears inconsistent to me that sugar prices are decontrolled and sugarcane prices continue to be regulated. He asked sugar industry to formulate a consistent policy on this.

22.12.2005 Organic food production is booming in China and India, which together host more than half the world’s farming households. according to a study by the International Fund for Agriculture and Development, which says organics can offer a route out of poverty for poor farmers.

22.12.2005 The poor need a ladder to climb out of poverty, not palliatives that keep them dependent on government handouts. Subsidies broadly defined have remained unchanged at 14 per cent of GDP for the last 15 years, and most of this goes to the non-poor. Subsidies for rural power, canal water and fertilisers benefit mainly large farmers. Subsidies for food, education and health overwhelmingly benefit urban folk and richer rural areas.

22.12.2005 The National Social Watch Coalition and ActionAid India provide the latest information and news from Hong Kong. The information has been provided in the form of two newsletters in PDF - wto news5.pdf and wto news11.pdf.

22.12.2005 The National Social Watch Coalition and ActionAid India provide the latest information and news from Hong Kong. The information has been provided in the form of two newsletters in PDF - wto news6.pdf and wto news8.pdf.

22.12.2005 Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar today admitted that agriculture is in deep trouble and is lagging behind compared to all other sectors.