-Down to Earth Srihari kurade proudly walks through his orchard of kokum (Garciniaindica), a wild fruit that is famous for its therapeutic properties. With more than 2,400 trees spread over seven hectares (ha) of land, his orchard in South Goa is the world’s largest kokum plantation. Kurade is also perhaps the only farmer in the region to have taken up systematic large-scale plantation of the fruit that is endemic to the...

-The Economic Times MANDYA: A new breed of moneylenders has pushed farmers of moneyed Mandya district in Karnataka into an endless debt trap, leading to mounting suicides, even as the institutionalised credit system has failed them. The system is so well entrenched that the borrowers themselves are taking steps to protect the moneylenders from a government crackdown on the practice. Farmers — big, small and marginal — have taken loans from private...

-IndiaSpend.com With 25 farmers in Karnataka committing suicide in June, it appears evident that rural India is in distress–the long-term cause, a growth rate of almost zero (0.2%), and the immediate cause, crop failures caused by two years of unseasonal winter rain. Crop failures = farmer suicides. That’s a familiar equation. But as rural distress grows, farmer suicides dropped 67% over five years to 2014, according to the latest data released by the...

-The Indian Express Farmers say CM promised Rs 2,500 per tonne, but factories paying only Rs 700; govt orders probe. Bengaluru: On June 24, Ningegowda, 61, a differently abled sugarcane farmer from Mandya in south Karnataka, turned the standing sugarcane crop in his 18 gunta field (1 acre = 40 guntas) into his funeral pyre. Till then, only one other farmer’s suicide had been reported from the region since April this...

There is a class angle to farmers' suicide in India. Close to three-quarter of farmers who committed suicide in 2014 were small and marginal farmers. ‘Bankruptcy or indebtedness’ accounted for one-fifth of total farmers’ suicide during 2014. The report entitled Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India 2014 by the National Crime Records Bureau of Ministry of Home Affairs clarifies the doubt that indebtedness and bankruptcy were major causes of farmers' suicide,...