-Business Standard/ India Spend 52% of India's Agricultural households are indebted; with an average outstanding loan of Rs 47,000 India’s foodgrain production rose five times over six decades, according to 2016 government data, the latest available. But with the average Indian farm half as large as it used to be 50 years ago and yields among the lowest in developing economies, both the agriculture sector and farmers have been driven to the...
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Think beyond loan waivers -Ramesh Chand & SK Srivastava
-The Hindu Strengthening the repayment capacity of farmers by improving and stabilising their income is the only way to keep them out of distress Indian agriculture is characterised by low scale and low productivity. About 85% of the operational landholdings in the country are below 5 acres and 67% farm households survive on an average landholding of one acre. More than half of the area under cultivation does not have access to...
More »MGNREGA wages less than minimum farm wages in 15 states: Panel -Shalini Nair
-The Indian Express As per data being examined by the committee, the minimum wages paid to agricultural workers are significantly higher than MGNREGA wages in Karnataka, Punjab, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Mizoram, and Andaman and the Nicobar Islands. THE COMMITTEE for revision of wages paid under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Generation Act (MGNREGA) has found that minimum agricultural wages are higher than MGNREGA wages in 15 states. An upward revision...
More »Small farms are eating away farmers' profits and productivity -Harini Calamur
-DNA Most of Europe avoided the fate of India, because of a very strict feudal law — that of following primogeniture, a system of inheritance by the firstborn (usually the first born son). Karnataka — preceded by UP, Punjab and Maharashtra — is the fourth state to have waived off loans taken by farmers. However, this is not going to be the end of the matter. You are likely to...
More »Farmer suicides: 70% of India's farm families spend more than they earn -Devanik Saha
-IndiaSpend.org The failing economics of such farms–Agricultural households in the south are most indebted–are exacerbated by additional loans that families take to meet health issues, leaving them with diminished ability to invest in farming. Nearly 70% of India’s 90 million Agricultural households spend more than they earn on average each month, pushing them towards debt, which is now the primary reason in more than half of all suicides by farmers nationwide,...
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