-The Hindu Business Line Pune: The protest against the Centre’s newly introduced farm laws is loudest in Punjab and Haryana, where the MSP mechanism is robust, benefiting wheat growing farmers. However, government data shows that Madhya Pradesh farmers have steadily taken over wheat growers in Punjab and Haryana to reap benefits of MSP in the last five years. Data from rabi marketing seasons (RMS) 2016-17 to 2020-21 shows that 47,58,350 farmers from...
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Tried, Tested, Failed: Why Farmers are Against Contract Farming -Shinzani Jain
-Newsclick.in Farmers fear they will have to engage with big traders and agribusinesses on an unequal playing field where these giant corporations will be dictating the terms of engagement. Approved by the government of India in 1988, the Pepsi project was launched to initiate a second agricultural revolution in Punjab. The effects of the first agricultural revolution had faded. Yields of major crops were low. A joint venture among PepsiCo, Voltas and...
More »MSP -- the factoids versus the facts -Reetika Khera, Sudha Narayanan and Prankur Gupta
-The Hindu The debate on agricultural issues must take into account the changed geography of procurement and the seller’s profile According to one definition, a factoid is “an item of unreliable information that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact”. After the passage of the three controversial farm laws, the Minimum Support Price (MSP) — not mentioned in the laws — has gained a lot of attention....
More »Govt must promote crop diversification by setting MSP for other crops as well -Manjit S Kang
-The Indian Express Farmers’ genuine concerns must be addressed as soon as possible so that they can continue producing food and fibre needed for the ever-increasing population. In the early 1960s, near-famine conditions prevailed in India and some 10 million tonnes of wheat had to be imported from the US under the PL480 programme. The country’s situation was pejoratively dubbed “ship-to-mouth” existence, as foodgrains arriving via ships were immediately consumed. In 1963, Norman...
More »In Punjab, the centrality of the mandi system -Shreya Sinha
-Hindustan Times The mandi has been a major rallying cry for the protests in Punjab. Its importance to agricultural life cannot be overstated The stand-off between the government and the farmers on the new farm laws shows no signs of easing. For a long time, the government insisted that the protest was led by middlemen and large farmers only in Punjab, and to some extent Haryana, who were concerned about losing their...
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