-The Financial Express Sorai Village: Even as official data show food inflation at 5-6%, elevated levels compared with the subdued prices of most other items, farmers are barely realising remunerative prices for their produce, another reason why rural consumption demand is dismally low. Potato farmers in Uttar Pradesh, for example, are selling the vegetable at a fifth of the price a year ago, thanks to a glut caused by excess production...

-The Hindu SRIKAKULAM: Mushroom cultivation is helping many unemployed youth and tribal farmers to get decent livelihood with less investment in Srikakulam district. Women groups have joined them in learning cultivation techniques thanks to huge demand for mushrooms in Visakhapatnam, Srikakulam and Vizianagaram districts. National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) has been conducting a series of training programmes with the support of various non governmental organisations including BREDS and ARTS...

-Down to Earth The crash in potato price is triggering a wave of suicides in several states. Will the NDA government's ambitious Price Stabilisation Fund help farmers? Soon after the National Democratic Alliance government announced its ambitious Price Stabilisation Fund to contain price volatility in the domestic market, the scheme faces its acid test. A bumper crop has led to a free fall in potato prices in several states this year. Between...

-Tehelka Agrarian policies are proving to be an albatross around the neck of ordinary farmers Amon Singh Kevat, 70, a small farmer in Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh, spent three long days in April waiting for his harvest to be picked up from an open plot that served as a mandi (procurement centre for agricultural produce). In need of money for a marriage in the family, Kevat didn’t even go home for meals. But...

-The Indian Express A little more than a week ago, World Bank chief Jim Yong Kim praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for launching the Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), which he called an “extraordinary effort” at financial inclusion. According to the Union finance ministry, India has attained 99 per cent financial inclusion, measured as households’ access to bank accounts. Within three months of launching the PMJDY, the government entered the Guinness...