minimum support price
Protesting farmers won’t back down
Despite a victory, protesting farmers show no sign of ending their demonstration on the roads outside Delhi, with thousands heading into the capital to mark the first-year anniversary of their protest.
Walnut market a hard nut to crack
Urban India loves walnuts. But growing the tasty “super food” is labor intensive and Kashmiri walnut farmers are losing out to cheap foreign imports.
Can farmers farm for prosperity?
Those who intervene for farmers’ welfare seem to prefer maintaining the poor-farmer image than ensuring financial success. The first of a four-part series explores this aspect
Cash crop cotton loses lustre for Ganjam farmers
Lack of transportation and marketing facilities and exploitation by private money lenders have forced cotton growers to cultivate other crops despite cotton’s potential for good returns
Dongria Kondhs struggle to sell forest produce during lockdown
As the peak harvest season of minor forest produce coincides with the lockdown period, the tribes of Niyamgiri Hills struggle to sustain their forest-based livelihood
Maize loses sheen for Bihar’s farmers
Seemanchal farmers, who switched from wheat and jute to water-friendly maize, are earning less despite high demand and good yield, and look to the government to intervene
Is farmer income support a sustainable solution?
Income support to smallholder farmers is similar to palliative measures like minimum support prices or loan waivers that do not address the problem of an unsustainable population living on a fixed resource base
Income support is healthy tonic for smallholder farmers
Instead of farm loan waivers and minimum support price for crops that distort resource allocation and markets, basic income support to small and marginal farmers is a far better state mechanism
Debts drive breadbasket farmers to daily wage labor
With farm income failing to keep pace with their debts, a large number of small and marginal farmers in Punjab and Haryana have started supplementing household earnings through daily wage labor