Agriculture Current Affair 5 August 2020

Maharashtra appoints special counsel to present case against seed companies

The Maharashtra government has appointed special counsels to present its case against global and Indian seed companies over the alleged poor-quality biotech cotton seed supply in the 2017-18 kharif season.

Solicitor-cum-Joint-Secretary BZ Sayeed, in his letter to the government pleader in the Bombay HC, stated that Vijaysinh Thorat and Snehal Jadhav will be special counsels and Vishal Kadam will assist them.

Saurashtra’s onions find a market in Bangladesh, courtesy Railways

In a first for onion growers in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Indian Railways is taking their bulb to a prospective market, all the way to Bangladesh.

The first goods train — a rake of 42 wagons — carrying about 2,500 tonnes of onions from the districts of Rajkot and Junagadh will start from Dhoraji station in Rajkot district and reach Darshana railway station on the Bangladesh border.

‘Rajasthan farmers will lose crops worth ₹1,000 crore to locusts’

It was the severity of the on-going locust incursions that prompted Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot to write a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi requesting him to declare it a national disaster, said experts on Tuesday.

In his letter to Modi, Gehlot said that farmers would suffer a loss of ₹1,000 crore even though timely warnings and joint locust control operations by the Centre and the State reduced the impact of the locust infestation.