-Countercurrents.org More than half of rural households in India are landless, or almost so. This deprives them of the most obvious asset needed for sustainable livelihoods and food security in villages–farmland. After  agriculture the next most important source of rural livelihood in India is dairy farming but here too the household with farmland has free access to crop residues which is increasingly not available to landless households who  have to incur extra...

Quite often it is argued by mainstream economists that a sizeable chunk of the Union Budget every year is wasted because the Government spends that on food and fertiliser subsidies. The burgeoning size of these two subsidies relative to the entire budget as well as the gross domestic product (GDP) is often used to build the argument that economic as well as environmental sustainability of the country is at stake...

-The Hindu A study at the Ludhiana-based Punjab Agricultural University to track the impact of Farmer Producer Organisations (FPO) on the income and employment of farmers in Punjab during 2019-20, has revealed that incomes increased after farmers joined the FPOs and the impact was greater among small, marginal and semi-medium farmers. Chandigarh: The study, titled “Economic Impact of Farmer Producer Organisations on Punjab Peasantry”, asserts that overall, the while permanent labour employment...

-Down to Earth The back of the Indian farmour is against the wall amid rising costs of inputs, climate change-induced risks and faulty market mechanisms More than 28 farmers and farm labourers die by suicide in India every day, according to the 2021 State of India’s Environment (SoE) report — an annual brought out by Down To Earth in association with Delhi-based non-profit Centre for Science and Environment (CSE). The SoE report highlighted...

-Newsclick.in The MSP system has long been the central topic of discussion in agricultural reforms. The MSP system has long been the central topic of discussion in agricultural reforms. Demystifying its pros and cons, PROF M S SRIRAM writes on what we can learn and do to make MSP an effective mechanism that empowers farmers. ARGUMENTS against a statutory minimum support price (MSP) have hovered around the following lines: The MSP benefits only a...