-Livemint.com For over 12 days now, farmers have been pressing the Centre to repeal a set of agriculture laws passed in September. Centre argues that the agenda is to offer choice to farmers while growers see unregulated private markets as a threat to minimum support prices. Mint explores. * Why are farmers more wary of pvt markets? Over the last five years, low global and domestic commodity prices have taken a toll on...

-Economic and Political Weekly Farmer suicides are an unfortunate result of the agrarian distress plaguing the rural economy of many states of the country. Marathwada and Vidarbha regions in Maharashtra have recorded very high numbers of farmer suicides, and an attempt to calculate the number of suicides and the suicide mortality rate is the first step towards gaining an in-depth understanding of the prevalence and seriousness of the issue. An analysis...

-Hindustan Times A gradual shift towards cash crops at the expense of food crops and deficit rainfall over the years are the primary reasons behind the agrarian crisis in Maharashtra’s drought-hit Marathwada region, according to a study conducted by the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B). Published in the Environmental Research Letters in May, the study analyses the role of rainfall deficits and cropping choices in loss of agricultural yield in Marathwada. The...

-The Indian Express The start of the sugarcane season in Maharashtra is marked by the seasonal migration of around 7-8 lakh labourers from Marathwada and North Maharashtra to the mills in various parts of the state. Pune: Maharashtra’s sugarcane crushing is all set to extend by at least a fortnight as mills complain of acute shortage of harvesting labourers. Mills say that at present around 15-20 per cent less labourers have turned...

-The Indian Express In many areas, farmers had harvested their crop but did not get time to shift the produce to a dry location as the rain caught them unawares. Farmers in Maharashtra are staring at crop loss of over Rs 5,000 crore across 30 districts after heavy rain caused extensive damage to standing crop in the last few days. The scale of crop loss may be even worse as authorities...