-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...

-Down to Earth Experts say they have already submitted a document to the ICAR about adopting IFS in north-eastern states India needs to adopt a “well designed” integrated farming system (IFS) to realise Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision to double farmers’ income by 2022, observed the scientists and agricultural experts at the ongoing 105th Indian Science Congress in Manipur today (March 19). “The IFS can enhance farmers’ income if we provide a...

-TheNewsMinute.com Politics, the sheer optics of the protest march, language – everything came together to ensure one protest was heard loudly, while the other failed. Tamil Nadu is watching Mumbai with interest. After all, farmers from Maharashtra managed to do what the Cauvery delta farmers could not. While over 100 farmers from Tamil Nadu sat in protest in New Delhi for 41 days last year and went back home empty-handed, the Maharashtra...

-TheWire.in Examples from Jharkhand, Karnataka and other places make a strong case for kitchen gardens in more parts of the country. Pali Biruli lives in Gondamara, a tribal village in Saraikela district of Jharkhand. When we stepped into the courtyard of her home to have a glass of water, the beauty of the surrounding greenery surprised us. Within a small place. she and her family members had managed to grow papaya, mango,...