-Hindustan Times The government’s decision to scrap high-value currency has sent wholesale vegetable prices crashing to rock-bottom levels, bringing misery to millions of farmers hoping for good returns for their produce after two successive drought years. Onions sold for just Re 1 per kilogram in wholesale markets at Madhya Pradesh’s Neemuch and Mandsaur this week while tomatoes cost less than Rs 2 per kg in Andhra Pradesh and Chandigarh. A kilogram of cauliflower...

-PTI KENDRAPARA: With the harvesting of paddy crop drawing near, the age-old practice of 'Badalia', a system of exchanging labour services prevalent in coastal districts, is showing signs of revival in some pockets of Odisha. A small and marginal farmer like Jugal Kishore Lenka is all set to work in a fellow farmer's plot during harvesting to cut down his need for cash in the post-demonetisation scenario. Together with Sudam Sahu, a fellow...

-The Telegraph Paradip: For Jugal Kishore Lenka, a marginal farmer from Goda village in Erasama block of Jagatsinghpur district, badalia, the once popular system of exchange of labour, has come as a big relief. Cash strapped by demonetisation, he was worried about labour payments for harvesting his paddy. Now, he has entered into a badalia arrangement with fellow farmer Sudam Sahu, who is also looking for labour for paddy harvesting. They can now exchange...

-The News Minute Rice Diversity Blocks in Kerala and five other states preserve over 1,000 indigenous varieties of rice that were at risk of being lost. In the Indian subcontinent, the birthplace of paddy, the colours of the crop’s many varieties are as diverse as the land, its people, languages, cultures, costumes, dialects and so on. But most of that variety was lost, when farmers were asked to forgo indigenous varieties...

-Hindustan Times Village Khokh (Patiala): Nek Singh Khokh fears he might wilt, just the way the saplings in his sprawling nursery might. Ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled his demonetisation plan, scrapping big denomination currency to drain the economy of black money and counterfeits, Khokh has been struggling to pay labourers to tend to his saplings. The owner of a nursery, some 25 km west of the Punjab town of Sirhind, Khokh...