-PSainath.org The adivasi women of Edamalakudi, Kerala's remotest panchayat, have formed a headload workers' group, helped light up their villages with solar power, and practice group farming in wild elephant territory. All are Muthavan tribals. Almost all are members of Kerala's extraordinary anti-poverty and gender justice movement - Kudumbashree. They are also neighbours of Chinnathambi, the keeper of the Wilderness Library. When 60 women in Edamalakudi carried about a hundred solar...
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The Idyll-Maker Who Built Timbaktu -Swati Sharma
-The New Indian Express Back in 1989, the area near Chennakothapalli village of Anantapur (the second driest area in India) in Andhra Pradesh was a wasteland. Till C K Ganguly (Bablu) and Mary Vattamattam chanced upon it in 1991 and saw its immense potential to blossom into a green paradise. The couple, along with friend John D'Souza, then bought 32 acres of this barren land. Inspired by Japanese author Masanobu Fufuoka's seminal...
More »How do you feed thousands of people in Rajasthan without irrigation?-Arati Kumar Rao
-Grist Media The people of the Thar desert have their ways. This story unfolds over a year and recounts history through contemporary lives lived gently and with the land. It experiences first-hand the extraordinary old magic of growing lush crops in the desert. The land was the color of burnt caramel. It was flat and it was featureless: there was no tree in sight, no blade of grass, no ditch, no dune,...
More »Farmers must get coverage for lost crops-Devinder Sharma
-Tehelka If a house can be insured against natural disaster, why can't a crop field? There is nothing more gruesome for any farmer than to see before his own eyes his lush green standing crop flattened by the vagaries of nature. All his hopes and aspirations from a bountiful harvest are grounded in a matter of few minutes. Not only the crop, but his life too is flattened. As many as 24...
More »UN Rapporteur calls for food democracy and agro-ecology in final report
-AgriculturesNetwork.org The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, today calls for radical transformation of the world's food systems. The emphasis in agricultural policy should shift from productivity to "well-being, resilience and sustainability", he says. This morning De Schutter presented his final report to the UN Human Rights Council after a six-year term as Special Rapporteur. In February, he also presented some of his findings at...
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