-Down to Earth Farmers are being pushed to suicide amid market shortage   Chilli farmers in Telangana’s Subakkapalli village, Bhopalapalli district, are living their worst nightmare. A new pest, black thrips (Thrips parvispinus), has destroyed over 40 hectares (ha) of standing crop in a matter of months. In Sidduri Ravindra Rao’s farm, the initial signs of the attack were reported in the first week of December last year. He increased the frequency of...

-The New Indian Express Poultry farming of this protein-rich black chicken paying rich dividends, reports Anuraag Singh MADHYA PRADESH: In many parts of the country, the colour black has been considered inauspicious. But in the forests of western Madhya Pradesh’s tribal-dominated Bheelanchal region, the same colour is ushering in fortune and prosperity in the lives of people who were once forced to work as labourers in adjoining Gujarat. Welcome to Jhabua, Alirajpur and...

-The Tribune While many of the big defaulters have escaped abroad, why is it invariably a farmer (or a small borrower) who is left to face ill-treatment and injustice in the loan recovery process? While the big defaulters are treated with kid gloves, farmers are always treated with a different yardstick, as if they are children of a lesser god. WHILE the Punjab State Cooperative Agricultural Development Bank (PADB) has issued arrest...

-The Hindu Business Line To make farmers aatmanirbhar, the governments should instead nurture a healthy credit culture and empower them via a robust ecosystem rather than relieving all the borrowers, irrespective of their distress levels. Only 4 out of the 21 political parties lost the election (either at the Centre or State) following the electoral promise and implementation of a Farm Loan waiver (FLW) scheme started by Haryana’s Devi Lal government. A...

-The New Indian Express She said that a majority of farmers are labour class and are usually nomadic, landless or smallholding farmers. BENGALURU: If halal meat is boycotted, as is being demanded by Hindu organisations, it will lead to similar consequences as the ban on cow slaughter did. It will impact the livelihoods of farmers severely, warned experts.Dr Sylvia Karpagam, a public health researcher who recently released a report on the effects...