-Hindustan Times The Indian farmer needs to sell his produce with as little intermediation as possible in order to make decent profits. One of the biggest roadblocks for this to happen is lack of mass demand for the majority of farm produce Faced with the spectre of rural anti-incumbency after the Gujarat results, the Modi government is in firefighting mode. Reportedly, a scheme is being planned to provide partial support to state...

-IndiaSpend.com So far, only a few states such as Karnataka and Tamil Nadu had made available millets and that too only in certain pockets. The union government proposes to include Coarse Grains such as jowar (sorghum), bajra (pearl millet) and ragi (finger millet) in the mid-day meal programme in schools and also distribute it through the government subsidised food programme, the public distribution system (PDS), agriculture secretary SK Patnaik said recently. This announcement...

-Livemint.com In India, 9 million people left farming between 2001 and 2011 largely due to distress, not because industry invited them, says Shyam Khadka, India’s representative at the FAO Shyam Khadka, India’s representative at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, says more Indians are moving out of agriculture due to distress and not because the manufacturing sector is inviting them. In an interview, Khadka calls for converting food...

-IndiaClimateDialogue.net In north Bihar, where floods devastate standing crops with increasing regularity in an era of climate change, a marginalised community is fighting all odds to protect an indigenous flood-resistant variety of rice. Sahorwa village is caught between the embankments of two major rivers in north Bihar. Between the Kosi river’s western embankment and Kamla Balan river’s eastern embankment, this village of 110 Musahar families remains flooded for seven to eight months...

-The Times of India Kishore Tiwari has been taking up the cause of the farmers since several years. Farm suicide in the cotton-district of Yavatmal came into focus due to his persistent efforts of continuously informing the media. After the BJP came into power in Maharashtra, Tiwari was roped in as chief of Vasantrao Naik Shetkari Swavalamban Samiti (VNSSM), a state government think-tank on agriculture. He feels it is time to reduce...