-The Financial Express In Madhya Pradesh’s tribal districts of Dewas and Khargone, the NGO, Samaj Pragati Sahayog, discourages cash transactions for agricultural inputs. The interest rates are usurious and vary according to commodities. For fertiliser, it is dheda—loan for the stuff has to be repaid 1.5 times over by the end of the harvest season. For pesticides it is sawa, or 1.25 times. Even barter can be extortionate. One quintal of...
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Notebandi takes the sauce out of Nashik's tomatoes -Aniket Aga & Chitrangada Choudhury
-RuralIndiaOnline.org Farmers in Maharashtra’s Nashik district – where one in every four tomatoes in India comes from – are destroying standing crops on a scale never seen before, following persistent rock-bottom prices since the November 8 demonetisation On Christmas morning, barely 24 hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation of the Rs. 3,600 crore Shivaji statue in Mumbai, Yashwant and Hirabai Bendkule were slashing and uprooting the tomato vines on...
More »Arhar pinches, this time for farmers! -Harish Damodaran
-The Indian Express For farmers, the main source of their woes is a bumper crop. If 2015 was the year of arhar (pigeon-pea) – retail prices of the milled dal scaled Rs 180-200 per kg levels in October and contributed hugely to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s defeat in the Bihar Assembly polls – 2016 is set to close with the humble legume virtually disappearing from the public radar. The new crop, which has...
More »Distress among Paddy Farmers in a Village of Azamgarh (Uttar Pradesh): Pre & Post Demonetisation -Santosh Verma
-Vikalp The paddy cropping and harvesting season has been concluded and the Rabi crops (mainly wheat) is seeded into the vast agricultural plains of Eastern Uttar Pradesh. The region is known to be highly dependent upon agriculture for livelihood and food security, but it is also known as one of the economically backward-regions of the country. The persistent negligence by the government to develop a mechanised crop procurement system (through Food...
More »'Ruined': Farmers hit as vegetable prices come crashing down after demonetisation -Chetan Chauhan
-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...
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