-Kafila.org With depressing regularity, the newspapers have been reporting farmers' suicides in many states. Recently, P Sainath wrote on BBC that around 296,438 farmers have committed suicide since 1995. He also mentions that cash crop cultivators of cotton, sugar cane, vanilla, pepper, groundnut etc account for the bulk of those suicides. According to a PIL heard by the Supreme Court in December 2014, around 3146 farmers in Maharashtra have committed suicide...
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An uncertain Hobbesian life -Feroze Varun Gandhi
-The Hindu India's small farmers have been struggling for centuries now and they need social and governmental action to change their future Of India's 121 million agricultural holdings, 99 million are with small and marginal farmers, with a land share of just 44 per cent and a farmer population share of 87 per cent. With multiple cropping prevalent, such farmers account for 70 per cent of all vegetables and 52 per cent...
More »Pesticide on your plate -Pritha Chatterjee & Aniruddha Ghosal
-The Indian Express New Delhi: Vegetables are the noble folk of food world, loved equally by doctors and grandmothers. Vegetarians live off them and meat-eaters are told to live off them. But in Delhi, under every crunchy leaf of radish or the shiny brinjal hide dangerous amounts of pesticides that can slowly kill, shows a new study by JNU. Pritha Chatterjee and Aniruddha Ghosal report how growers, consumers and the authorities may...
More »Maharashtra government dismisses 166 ‘corrupt’ agricultural market committees -Aparna Pallavi
-Down to Earth Agricultural markets have turned into centres of political power, say farmers' organisations The new BJP government in Maharashtra has dismissed 166 agricultural produce market committees (APMCs), including the apex Navi Mumbai APMC, following thousands of complaints of irregularities and misconduct received against them. An order to this effect was issued on Monday, November 10, to the director of agricultural marketing in the state. Agriculture Secretary Sudhir Goyal informed that the...
More »Cotton farmers hit by falling prices, rising input costs and China’s import squeeze -Gopal B Kateshiya & Vivek Deshpande
-The Indian Express Rajkot/ Nagpur: For Kanaksinh Jadeja, Arvind Bhoyar and Rubhash Jakhar, cotton symbolised hope and a reason to believe there was still a future in agriculture. All three farmers - from Panchiyavadar in Gondal taluka of Rajkot (Gujarat), Ashi in Warora tehsil of Chandrapur (Maharashtra) and Patrewala in Fazilka (Punjab) respectively - made decent money over the last 10 years by growing cotton. They were helped by two factors. The first...
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