-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...

-GovernanceNow.com As farmers protests take centre stage across the country, Swaraj Party convenor explains the ecological, economic and existential crisis behind this unrest. * We have recently seen farmers from Tamil Nadu protesting in the national capital. Then Maharashtra farmers protested, deciding not to send their produce to cities. The agitation has now reached Madhya Pradesh, leading to killings. Why there is sudden farmers’ unrest in the country? I think we...

-The Hindu Of the country’s 217 million children, nearly 50% endure multidimensional poverty, says Oxford survey About 31% of the world’s “multidimensionally poor” children live in India, according to a new report by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), a poverty reduction project grounded in economist Amartya Sen’s ‘capability approach’. “In terms of countries, fully 31% of the 689 million poor children live in India, followed by Nigeria (8%), Ethiopia (7%)...

-Livemint.com The RBI-commissioned study listed faulty crop choices and aspirational consumption patterns as other major factors for farmer suicides New Delhi: Shame arising out of inability to repay loans taken from relatives and acquaintances is a key reason for farmers resorting to suicide, a study commissioned by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) found. The study titled “Lives in debt: narratives of agrarian distress and farmer suicides”, conducted by researchers at Shiv Nadar...

-Deccan Herald Madivalappa Totagi, an organic farmer based in Mugad village near Dharwad, is known for his innovative approach and eco-friendly farming methods. This year, his experiment reached a new level with the cultivation of 20 heritage jowar varieties. The seeds of variety conservation were sown in his mind when he met seed saviour Shankar Langti from Khanapur in Belagavi district. Shankar, has formed a farmers’ group in his village, Gundenatti, and...