-Press release by Pesticide Action Network (PAN) International and 430 civil society and indigenous peoples organizations from 69 countries dated June 9, 2022  Reminding the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of its obligations to uphold human rights, 430 civil society and Indigenous peoples organizations from 69 countries across the globe today called on the FAO Council to rescind the agency’s partnership with CropLife International, the industry association representing the world’s largest...

-Livemint.com India’s wheat export proscription was the first signal of awareness that moves on many fronts are needed for inflation control The Indian export ban on wheat in mid-May drew much negative attention. For the record, it is a ban on Private Sector wheat exports, and leaves open government-to-government contracts. The widespread criticism of the ban was misplaced in my opinion. Private wheat traders had responded exuberantly to the global demand for wheat...

-Financial Express Dataset and methodological weaknesses cast doubt on recent poverty estimates that claim drastic reduction Bhalla, Bhasin and Virmani in a working paper (IMF), claimed India’s poverty, per a $1.9 per person per day poverty line (at PPP), was 0.9% of the population in 2020. Thanks to government transfer of free rations of 5 kg per person month, it fell to 0.8% (from 0.9% in 2019). Roy and de Velt, for...

-The Tribune While many of the big defaulters have escaped abroad, why is it invariably a farmer (or a small borrower) who is left to face ill-treatment and injustice in the loan recovery process? While the big defaulters are treated with kid gloves, farmers are always treated with a different yardstick, as if they are children of a lesser god. WHILE the Punjab State Cooperative Agricultural Development Bank (PADB) has issued arrest...

-NITI Aayog Working Paper, ISBN: 978-81-953811-7-3 Abstract -  The importance of agriculture in an economy usually declines as it climbs the development ladder. Raising agriculture productivity has been known to be an important precursor. Labour productivity in agriculture can either be increased by higher land productivity or higher land availability per farmer and mechanisation. In India, however, the dramatic increase in land productivity through industrial farming has caused severe environmental damage and...