-Down to Earth The back of the Indian farmour is against the wall amid rising costs of inputs, climate change-induced risks and faulty market mechanisms More than 28 farmers and farm labourers die by suicide in India every day, according to the 2021 State of India’s Environment (SoE) report — an annual brought out by Down To Earth in association with Delhi-based non-profit Centre for Science and Environment (CSE). The SoE report highlighted...
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Climate crisis lies at the heart of farmer protests in India -Omair Ahmad
-IndiaClimateDialogue.net Protests by Indian farmers against three new farm laws have deep roots in income insecurity, which is driven by changing rainfall patterns and incentives that promote the overuse of water The protests by Indian farmers against three laws initially passed as ordinances have gone from sporadic in August 2020 to the biggest peaceful civil society protest in the world. Despite 11 rounds of talks and the creation of a committee by...
More »Don’t ignore the women farmers -Thamizhachi Thangapandian
-The Hindu The gender gap in the agriculture sector will only widen more with the current farm laws Eminent agriculture scientist M.S. Swaminathan once said, “Some historians believe that it was women who first domesticated crop plants and thereby initiated the art and science of farming. While men went out hunting in search of food, women started gathering seeds from the native flora and began cultivating those of interest from the point...
More »Farmers want better APMCs, not ‘mukti’ from them, says AIKMS
-The Hindu The document argued that the diesel cost had been raised tremendously by the present government. The Left- affiliated All-India Kisan Mazdoor Sabha (AIKMS) on Sunday released a document countering the claims of the Modi government on the three contentious farm laws, saying that the government’s arguments for not repealing the legislations were “deceptive” and “untruthful”. It also accused the government of propagating “falsehood” to claim that the laws would help...
More »Research shows intermediaries’ role is misunderstood. Local market realities more at play -Shoumitro Chatterjee, Mekhala Krishnamurthy, Devesh Kapur and Marshall M Bouton
-ThePrint.in Researchers associated with Pennsylvania University’s India study centre looked at agricultural markets of Bihar, Odisha and Punjab. They found that intermediaries are a rational response to the dominant structure of Indian farming. Most Indian farmers have tiny farms that yield meagre incomes. They face a multiplicity of risks, which jeopardises even these low incomes. These twin pressures are particularly acute in eastern India, manifest in the two states that were the...
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