-Livemint.com Declining income, shrinking farmlands, rise in number of dependents on existing holdings add to farm woes Bengaluru: Since 2000, Karnataka has put nearly 200,000 hectares of farmland to non-agricultural use, including for industrial, residential and infrastructure projects. Besides shrinking farmlands, the number of dependents on existing land holdings have also increased considering little employment opportunities elsewhere. From 1.312 million hectares in 2000-01 (cumulative), the total land put to non-agricultural use has risen...

-Financial Express From camelccino to camel milk chocolate, there’s no dearth of delicacies on offer. Camel milk is in the news. And hailing its virtue is none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Addressing a gathering of farmers in Anand, Gujarat, in October, Modi narrated how he was ridiculed for describing camel milk as nutritious once. It was during his stint as chief minister of Gujarat that he had tried promoting camel...

-TheWire.in Pesticide poisoning is the leading method of suicide among both men and women in the country. It is also the method that is easiest to prevent – by banning and removing highly hazardous ones from agricultural practice through legislation. The ban on highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs) currently being discussed in India will not only protect the environment and improve the public health but will also achieve another rarely acknowledged goal –...

-The Hindu The court-ordered clean-up in the textile town has managed to mitigate ill-effects of industrial pollution to a large extent. A similar remediation effort, involving the government and stakeholders, is needed in other parts of Tamil Nadu, where groundwater has been so contaminated that farming is not possible anymore On a sunny June morning, two men are spotted fishing close to the Orathupalayam dam in Erode district. A rather ordinary act in...

-The Hindu Farmers’ protests interrogate the reigning development model.   Alternatives do exist The recent spate of peasant protests across wide swathes of the country points sharply to the unjust folly and sheer unviability of the path of development that India has embraced, especially in the reform era since the late 1980s. Even, say, a modest food critic in metropolitan India collects an immodest annual pay package which can easily go into seven figures....