-Livemint.com India’s weather office has forecast a normal monsoon. Bountiful rains in the June-to-September period are critical for about 800 million Indians who depend directly or indirectly on farming New Delhi: Gangabhishan Thaware, a 53-year-old farmer from the drought-prone Marathwada region of Maharashtra, took an unusual step in July last year. Thaware and his fellow villagers had toiled on their fields and spent thousands of rupees on seeds and fertilizers, hopeful...

-India Water Portal More than 1000 villages of the state are expected to be affected by a severe water crisis. Lokesh Verma, a farmer from Nainital’s Chanfi village, says this is the third year in a row that he is bearing losses in agriculture. “I have lost around Rs 2 lakh and there’s a debt of Rs 70,000 to pay off. I grow strawberries, guavas and peas in my 15 bighas of...

-Down to Earth More than creating financial crunch for upcoming sowing season, cash crunch is impacting the prices at which farmers are selling their produce While the Union government is promising that cash crunch in the market would end soon, the farmers have already started feeling the pinch badly. The fears of demonetisation have come back for them. They are in soup because not only is this the harvest season, but also...

-The Indian Express Curbing stubble burning is about inducing behavioural changes in farmers. Given that crop residue burning has an environmental footprint and poses health hazards, one needs to be cautious while evaluating the Centre’s policy to mitigate the crisis. But there is also an urgent need for such an evaluation. The Centre has allocated Rs 1,050 crore to the states where crop residue burning poses a pollution hazard. The Union Ministry...

-Newsclick.in The government has chosen not to intervene in the market prices of the seasonal crops, forcing farmers to deal with the debt and the crisis on their own. Despite the Maharashtra government’s farm loan waiver scheme to “settle” the agrarian debts of farmers, the number of farmers committing suicide in the state continues to rise. The state has witnessed a total of 696 farmer suicides in the initial three months of...