-Livemint.com The production of ‘mahua’ is finally entering the formal economy as new initiatives seek to upscale this indigenous drink, selling it across the country and even the globe It is a cloudy morning in Nangur village in Bastar district, Chattisgarh. It is a settlement of a little over 400 families, considered fairly large in these parts. We make a bumpy journey down a narrow, unpaved road intermittently shaded by sargi (sal)...

-Livemint.com With shrinking farm sizes and lack of accurate land records, farmers find it difficult to generate enough income to provide for their households From farm subsidies to farm loan waivers, the Indian government spends crores on farmer welfare, but these efforts will be inadequate unless they can tackle an increasingly daunting barrier: lack of land. The provisional figures from the latest agriculture census reveals how land—the most critical input for agriculture—is...

-The New Indian Express The revenue officials are facing tough time due to the illegal conversion of agricultural land into residential plots by land owners. NELLORE: The revenue officials are facing tough time due to the illegal conversion of agricultural land into residential plots by land owners. It was found that illegal land conversions had allegedly been carried out on the city outskirts due to the rise in land prices. The revenue officials...

-Livemint.com Loan waivers and electricity subsidies are band-aids at best; a deeper transformation is needed The past few days have neatly summed up the scale and nature of the challenges facing India’s agriculture sector. First, the provisional agriculture census 2015-16 showed that landholdings have continued their decades-long trend of fragmentation, leading to a further rise in the proportion of small and marginal farmers. Then, 30,000 farmers, who had started their march from...

-The Hindu Farmer Ghani Khan is a conservator at heart; his on-site exhibit has traditional strains of rice Mysuru: Armed with a degree in archaeology and museology from the University of Mysore, Ghani Khan of Kirugavalu in Malavalli taluk of Mandya district nurtured dreams of being a curator in a museum, conserving and showcasing heritage artefacts. But fate had other plans. He became a farmer, a family tradition, and his dreams of a...