-India Today Ahmedabad: IIT-Madras graduate Kannan Lakshminarayan dusted a few copies of "Young India" to find Mahatma Gandhi's vision and initiate cotton farmers to use miniature spinning machines right in their village where they grow the crop and increase their income. Following this, the middleman was out, the long-drawn value chain was short-circuited while farmers became spinners first and subsequently, weavers and even garment makers. In 1920, Mahatma Gandhi had written in...

-The Indian Express Mumbai: Despite MGNREGA’s rich possibilities, Kumar notes that the Maharashtra government has slashed allocations under it to Rs 800 crore in 2014-15. Even as it stares at unprecedented crop loss from back-to-back droughts followed by untimely rains/hailstorms, Maharashtra has seemingly given the short shrift to MGNREGA, which could have gone some way in mitigating the current crisis. And significantly, its potential has been least leveraged in Vidarbha, the region...

-Business Standard Greater adoption of cash crops combined with a collapse in the prices of agri-commodities has led farmers to the brink in major agricultural areas According to the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) data, nearly 64 per cent of all farmer suicides in the country in 2013 took place in the four states of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, raising the question: why is rural stress resulting in farmer suicides...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A home ministry helpline offering information on quake-hit Nepal has been swamped by Indian farmers airing their distress, embarrassing a government already under the Opposition's cosh for its "anti-farmer" policies. Compounding the discomfiture, most of the callers are demanding the Rs 15 lakh that Narendra Modi had, during last year's election campaign, promised to deposit in every bank account after retrieving black money from abroad, ministry officials said. "We...

-The Hindu VISAKHAPATNAM: Most of the problems causing the agrarian crisis in the country can be solved by reverting to nature-based farming, says expert Subhash Palekar. A two-day workshop on nature-based farming and zero-budget farming would be conducted for farmers of the North Andhra districts at AU Ambedkar Assembly Hall here from Monday, Mr. Palekar told media here on Sunday. The Green Revolution had increased the cost of agricultural production as farmers were...