India should look at Latin American countries to keep its food security intact. With little or no investment in the agriculture sector,it is estimated that 45% of Indian farmers want to quit farming—supply-side constraints have been a major causeforconcern. Add to that rapidly falling water tables in North India – India’s bread basket, and erratic monsoons from climate change leading to domestic food output falling short of demand, repeatedlyinthefuture. Talking...

A meticulously researched book by A. Vaidyanathan, Agricultural Growth in India: Role of Technology, Incentives and Institutions, is an illuminating scholarly work. Thinking about it one realizes the dismal and declining state of Indian agriculture and the poor governance at both Central and state government levels that has brought it to this sorry pass. A valuable compendium of data and analysis of Indian agriculture since Independence, it is a valuable...

Potato farmers Madhusudan Mondal and Lakshman Adak, in their mid-50s, live 15km apart in West Bengal’s Hooghly district. Both have produced a bumper crop this year, but that has meant different things for Mondal and Adak. Mondal earned around Rs3.5 lakh selling 150 tonnes of potatoes to PepsiCo India Holdings Pvt. Ltd, having signed a contract with the maker of carbonated beverages and Frito-Lay chips to sell his produce to it...

Riding on high sales of its snacks brands like Lays and Uncle Chipps, Pepsico has engaged 12,000 farmers across the country for contract farming of potato. "There are 12,000 farmers doing contract farming of potato for us involving 16,000 acres of land," Executive Vice-president of Pepsico Holdings (agro-business) Nischint Bhatia said. He said that out of the 12,000 farmers, 6,500 of them are in West Bengal working 2,600 acres. Bhatia...

The Orissa Agriculture Produce Markets Act was amended in 2006 to allow establishment of private markets and contract farming in the state. However, even four years after that, the act has failed to meet the expected results reasons being poor implementation at the ground level, said experts. A study, “Farmers access to market facilities in Orissa”, released by the Centre for Youth and Social Development reveals this. The act enables any person,...