-The Times of India Growing grass and selling it in the market may be more profitable than cultivating crops like wheat, rice, pulses or oilseeds. This bizarre conclusion, a reflection of the desperate conditions of Indian farmers, can be reached if one looks at how the value of various crops has changed over the last five years. Between 2011-12 and 2015-16, the total value of cereals and pulses produced in the country went...
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In 'prosperous' Punjab, farmers battle uncertainty, rising costs of production -Manraj Grewal Sharma
-Hindustan Times Fatehgarh Sahib: He owns four acres of land, farms 20 acres more on lease, and has a debt of Rs 10 lakh. Gurmukh Singh, 44, is one of better-to-do farmers of Pandrali, a quiet, well-groomed village in Fatehgarh Sahib district with several newly-built houses, smooth streets and girls on scooters. It’s a picture that could well be captioned ‘prosperous Punjab’. But the genteel façade hides the struggles of the...
More »Demonetisation apart, cheaper imports too hit the farm sector -Tejinder Narang
-The Financial Express The current agitation of farmers on cereal, oilseeds and vegetables has attracted a lot of analysis with regards to the causes. Many such analyses have converged on low hikes in MSP in the last three-four years as the major cause, and the general public also believes so. Stocking limits, poor warehousing facilities, export bans, lack of a properly developed food processing industry and free trade in commodity exchanges...
More »In Maharashtra, demand grows for a minimum support price for all farm produce -Abhiram Ghadyalpatil
-Livemint.com In a year when Maharashtra’s agriculture sector recorded a growth of 12.5%, a look at why farmers in regions as distantly located as Nashik and Wardha are up in arms Ahmedabad/ Nashik/ Warda (Maharashtra): Rajendra Borgude, 42, is a prosperous farmer half of whose 50 acre-irrigated farmland goes under grape cultivation. He drives a Nissan Terrano and was able to get a crop loan of Rs12 lakh from Nashik District Central...
More »Of songs and seeds: This MP man is on a mission to save tradition, local crops -Neeraj Santoshi
-Hindustan Times Madhya Pradesh’s Babulal Dahiya is a collector of folk songs and seeds and has sown 110 varieties of rice to preserve them. Bhopal: He is a collector of folk songs and seeds. And it was while collecting Bagheli folklore, this 72-year-old farmer cum Bagheli poet realized that saving folk songs and sayings won’t mean much if the local crop varieties, which repeatedly crop up in the folk literature, are...
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