-Deccan Chronicle Nearly 40 per cent of the crops were lost due to the pest attack. HYDERABAD: The Telangana state government has decided to encourage the cultivation of pulses in place of cotton during the ensuing Kharif season in June. This is because cotton farmers had suffered huge loss in 2017 due to the pink bollworm attack and there are concerns about pests harming the cotton crop again during the kharif season....

-Firstpost.com/ The Ladies Finger “After all, what did the widows of farmers know about agriculture, crop management, bank loans, private debts, land documents, health bills, power connections, panchayat politics, children’s education? The short answer was – everything.” When farmers commit suicide in India – an occurrence so common that ‘farmer suicides’ is a phrase that’s become commonplace in newsrooms and policy spaces – their deaths are assessed and a compensation is given...

-Livemint.com To stabilize crop prices and make them remunerative, the Swaminathan Commission proposed significant improvements in the implementation of MSPs Across the country, farmers are furious—and rightfully so. Four years ago, they helped bring the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power, believing Narendra Modi’s claims that they would no longer suffer official neglect. But since then, conditions in agriculture have got worse. Earlier problems have worsened as farm incomes have been squeezed...

-The Hindu The children of the farmers who committed suicide do not receive the support or counselling they need to recover from the resulting mental trauma. Jyoti Shelar visits the villages in Maharashtra worst affected by farmer suicide and reports on these minors’ struggle to get their lives back on track “Every time I open the door, I see my father’s body,” says 14-year-old Nikita Surwase, pointing at the iron shaft on...

-ThePrint.in The FM knew that the media would not spend that much of time and attention on farmers. He knew that on farmers, you need not put your money where your mouth is. I type the finance minister’s name very carefully. He is “Jaitley”, and not “Jaitlie”. I bow to India’s Parliament and note that the spelling of his name is a matter of national interest. Now I wait for Parliament to...