-India Today Devgadh Baria, Gujarat: Savita Naik, Navliben, Chandaben and Kamtiben eke out a meagre living in Panchiyasaal village, just about 30 km from the block headquarters of Devgadh Baria in Gujarat's tribal-dominated Dahod district. They have 1 to 1.5 bighas of land and so have been categorised as marginal land holders. It was a huge fight for them to earn even this land - they fought right from the level of...

-Live Mint Together with unpaid sugarcane arrears from mills, an errant monsoon has made the situation acute for farmers On the night of 28 August, at 1.30am, 40-year-old sugarcane farmer Rambeer Rathi shot himself in the head with a country-made revolver. A few days earlier, Rathi, of Tikri village in Baghpat district of western Uttar Pradesh, had sold two of his buffaloes to repay a bank loan of Rs.80,000 taken last year. But even...

-The Statesman Prime Minister Narendra Modi has expressed anguish over suicides by farmers, whose condition has not improved despite the high rate of economic growth. The reason for this distressing state of affairs is that economic policies are badly crafted. The primary effort of the Government has been to increase agricultural production. The price factor is not taken into consideration, the perception being that the farmer will be better off...

-Women's Feature Service Tribal families in Bankura, West Bengal, living on a stable diet of potato and rice and occasionally some 'daal' (lentils), are now consuming a variety of vegetables, cereals, fruits and animal protein with relish on a daily basis, marking a sea change in the nutrition parametres in one of the most backward districts of India. The credit for this dramatic transformation goes to the dry land sustainable integrated farming...

-The Hindu Business Line How ‘Protected Cultivation' can help prevent crop damage due to national disasters While the first green revolution managed to make the nation self sufficient the next round of reforms certainly needs to address the problems faced by today's farmers. According to statistics available on Indian Council of Agricultural Research, India reaped a record foodgrain production of 259.32 million tonnes (mt) in 2011-12. However, the output fell to 257.13...