-Firstpost.com Chandigarh: With extensive rice farming in Punjab taking an increasing toll on groundwater reserves and soil health, government agencies are now asking farmers to diversify into profitable allied trades including dairy and pig farming and fisheries. Farmers are also being asked to cultivate crops other than paddy. Farmers in different parts of the state have started growing other, more profitable crops alongside rice. In a break with the fertiliser and pesticide-driven...

-TheNewsMinute.com Water is a resource that will never run out, they say; but its scarcity has been the undoing of many families in Kadiri, a town in Andhra Pradesh’s Anantapur district. Anantapur district has seen varying degrees of drought for many years now. Barren lands and wilting crops are a common sight in these parts. The sun beats down on you and wears you out, and there is no water in...

-Hindustan Times Profitability takes a hit as real MSPs have not risen over the years New Delhi: Most commentary around rural anger in India has been focused on either the sector’s growth performance or government spending on agriculture. Such analysis is likely to present an incomplete picture at best. Government spending on agriculture is a small fraction of the total agricultural economic output. In 2017-18, the ministry of agriculture’s spending was less...

-The Tribune Agrarian society vs a non-agrarian economy poses a huge political challenge. JUST how many farmers are there in India? This is not merely a statistical question. This is a question of policy and political significance. We have all grown up reading about India as an agrarian economy, with a majority of its population engaged in farming. Does that continue to be the case? Or has the number of farmers declined...

-Hindustan Times According to the 2011 census, 45% of India’s total workers are employed in the non-agricultural sector. This number excludes those who work as either cultivators or agricultural labourers Employment generation (or the lack of it) will probably be the biggest issue in next year’s general elections. India’s employment challenge is broadly perceived as one of moving agricultural workers to remunerative jobs in the non-farm sector, and rightly so. With a...