-The Economic Times Chandigarh: The ongoing procurement of mustard at a minimum support price (MSP) of Rs 4,000 per quintal in Haryana is hurtled by a lack in the number of collection centres. Farmers are selling the produce to traders at Rs 3,700-3,800 per quintal in the state as the logistic costs are too high to reach the collection centres in many districts in the state. Most of the farmers have sold...

-Livemint.com Farmers continue to be vulnerable to frequent episodes of losses that neither the state nor the markets have been able to mitigate The dramatic long march to Mumbai involving thousands of distressed farmers on 12 March is a remarkable feat of peaceful protest against the state, given its apathy towards farmers’ distress as well as its failures in safeguarding tribal land rights. However, what is surprisingly missing in this poignant narrative...

-The Hindu Slaughter of cattle has stopped after the BJP government took over, and they cannot be transported to other States as cow vigilantes strike fear UNNAO: Farmer Govind Sharma was facing a dharam sankat (moral dilemma). Stray cattle were eating up his valuable crops. But the farmer’s religious beliefs forbade him from using force to drive them out. After much thought, he decided to walk the middle path: catch the bovines...

-The Hindu Farming must be treated as a market-based enterprise and made viable on its own terms The week-long farmers’ march which reached Mumbai earlier this month, on the anniversary of Gandhi’s Dandi March of 1930, was unprecedented in many ways. It was mostly silent and disciplined, mostly leaderless, non-disruptive and non-violent, and well organised. It received the sympathy of middle class city dwellers, food and water from bystanders, free medical services...

-Livemint.com The only way to solve the farmers’ problem is to make entry to other sectors attractive by creating employment opportunities, and to make it easy to exit farming Farmers have a bad romance with the Indian polity. On the one hand, India loves, even worships, these farmers. On the other, Indian policymakers create the most impossible regulatory environment for the agricultural sector, trapping farmers in a low-income, low-productivity occupation. The latest...