-RuralIndiaOnline.org Huge quantities of cash crops lie unsold across India – like cotton in Maharashtra. A hunger crisis looms, yet farmers in Vidarbha plan to sow cotton, not food crops, once again this kharif season Seventy-year-old Kisan Sakhru Pawar, patriarch of a joint farming family in Maharashtra’s Yavatmal district, is very anxious. The climbing Covid-19 graph is not the main reason for his anxiety. His concern: unsold cotton. “We have 350 quintals of cotton,...

-The Hindu Even though a record crop is expected this year, the lockdown may have robbed farmers of the chance to reap profits. There are no migrant labourers to help with harvesting and procurement, and no transport facilities to take the produce to markets in many parts of the country, report Vikas Vasudeva and Priscilla Jebaraj Jagtar Singh is a man in a hurry. It’s April 15, and with temperatures starting to...

-The Indian Express With small land-holdings, hilly terrains, water scarcity and parched lands, farming is neither profitable nor a dependable source of income in many villages. Dahod: The ardous journey is not just what migrant labourers, who are returning in thousands from cities to their villages amid an unprecedented nation wide lockdown in view of the coronavirus pandemic, are facing. Deeper economic uncertainties stare at many of them back in their villages. Sukhlal...

After the outbreak of COVID-19 in China during early January this year and its dissemination globally within a few days, health experts have suggested ways to check its spread exponentially among the rest of the population. In the age of internet connectivity, work-from-home and self-isolation have been advised as solutions to ensure social distancing and avoid large-scale social gatherings. Experts have asked governments and private enterprises to keep people at...

-IdeasforIndia.in Usharmukti, a project of the Government of West Bengal, is being carried out in collaboration with civil society organisations in the western part of the state, to carry out watershed activities under MNREGA to conserve soil and water. In this note, Ashwini Kulkarni describes the main idea behind and working of the innovative project from her visit to the project area. When a farmer says that with potato in Rabi season...