KrishiGurukul Club

World Bank offers ₹869 crore loan for watershed management for Indian farmers •In a major boost to Indian farmers, India will receive a ₹869 crore loan for watershed management from World Bank •The loan has a maturity of 15 years, including a grace period of 4.5 years, the Finance Ministry said The Union Finance Ministry said on Friday announced that the World Bank will provide a $115 million ( ₹869 crores) loan to fund a programme in India that will help national and state institutions adopt improved watershed management practices to increase farmers' resilience to climate change, promote higher productivity and better incomes. As India has one of the largest watershed management programmes in the world, the new programme will further boost the watershed management system in the country. The Finance Ministry said in a statement, "in this context, the new programme will help the participating state governments in their efforts to transform watershed planning and execution and

  Maharashtra launches its own Agriculture Export Policy: S eeks consistency in center's export policy to promote state's Agri exports The Government of Maharashtra launched the state's Agriculture Export Policy (AEP) on Friday, which will focus on the export promotion of 21 agricultural commodities. The Government of India had unveiled its Agriculture Export Policy in December 2018, directing the state governments to draft their own policy. Accordingly, the state government had constituted a committee in May 2019 to draft the policy. Addressing stakeholders of the agriculture export chain, Anoop Kumar, chief secretary (Co-operation and Marketing), Maharashtra, said "We have to focus on exports as it can help increase the net income of farmers by about 40% to 45%. The domestic market has limited capacity to give remunerative returns to farmers." Kumar said that the major complaint of the foreign buyers of produce from the state is about the sudden changes in expo