-The Hindu After beef ban, no buyers for old bullocks. AMRAVATI: For the fourth week in a row, Balu Bhalve has returned home dejected. In the sweltering heat, the debt-ridden farmer travelled more than 15 km from his village to sell a pair of old bullocks at Badnera Mandi here on Friday. But the cattle market, abuzz on the weekly auction day even two months ago, presents a grim picture now. Even after...
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Confronting kharif 2015 - Indira Rajaraman
-Livemint.com The prospect of weak monsoon is never good news, but this time it comes on top of a rabi harvest destroyed by unseasonal rainfall, and a spate of Farmer Suicides The prospect of a sub-normal monsoon is never good news, but this time it comes on top of a rabi harvest destroyed by being rained on at the wrong time, and a spate of Farmer Suicides. The only option is...
More »Deepening agrarian crisis endangers food security
A recent press release from the Ministry of Agriculture shows that the area affected by recent rains and hailstorms is estimated to be 189.81 lakh hectares (on 24 April 2015), which is nearly double the total area affected that was earlier estimated on 16 April 2015. (See the link below). Experts argue that such extreme weather events may severely damage food economy of the nation, apart from breaking the spirit...
More »Sick policies, starving farmers -Amit Bhardwaj
-Tehelka Agrarian policies are proving to be an albatross around the neck of ordinary farmers Amon Singh Kevat, 70, a small farmer in Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh, spent three long days in April waiting for his harvest to be picked up from an open plot that served as a mandi (procurement centre for agricultural produce). In need of money for a marriage in the family, Kevat didn’t even go home for meals. But...
More »Green No More -NK Bhoopesh
-Tehelka In these times of agrarian distress, NK Bhoopesh revisits the ‘revolution’ that changed Indian agriculture The growing number of Farmer Suicides across the country has punched holes in the dominant narrative of India’s rise as a global economic power articulated ad nauseum by big business, mainstream politicians and the corporate media. It has also put a question mark on another familiar tale: that the green revolution introduced in the 1960s was...
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