-The Hindu With grocers and cold storage owners refusing to accept scrapped currency notes, farmers are struggling to get potato seeds while landless labourers are forced to forgo their food. Chitra Bag and her family of six are eating less these days. They make do with one meal instead of the usual three meals, despite a gruelling 8-10 hours of work daily as landless farm labourers. Even though vegetables, grown around their...

-The Hindu IR8, the high-yielding rice variety helped India fight famine, turns 50 this month In 1967, when a 29-year-old N. Subba Rao sowed a semidwarf variety of rice in over 2,000 hectares in Atchanta, West Godavari district in Andhra Pradesh, he wouldn't have thought he would be part of a revolution in rice cultivation. What Dr. Rao sowed in his farm was IR-8, a rice variety developed by the International Rice Research...

-The Hindu Business Line Bengaluru/ Ahmedabad: Though acreage under the main rabi (winter) crops, such as wheat, gram and mustard continued to rise, overall sowing for the season across the country has turned sluggish as cash-strapped farmers have slowed down planting. According to preliminary data released by the Agriculture Ministry, acreage under rabi crops till November 18 stood lower, at 241.73 lakh hectares, compared to 243.38 lakh ha in the corresponding period...

-The Indian Express These enterprises — whom she broadly categorises as ‘rural commercial capital’ — enjoy privileged access to formal credit networks. In her insightful study of the working of agricultural markets in West Bengal, British development studies scholar Barbara Harris-White has documented in detail how trade in farm produce is controlled through a web of rural and semi-urban agro commercial enterprises. These enterprises — whom she broadly categorises as ‘rural commercial capital’...

-The Indian Express Farmers are facing the heat from both collapse of demand and inability to purchase inputs post-demonetisation. Junnar (Maharashtra): The last one week and more has brought nothing but bad news for Vasant Pimpale. This farmer from Pargaon Tarfe Ale, a village in Pune district’s Junnar taluka, has already lost 11 tonnes of green chilli grown on eight out of his 15-acres holding. The loss hasn’t been courtesy drought, flood...