Unpredictable weather, unreliable insurance, unbelievable profit to companies
Farmers across India suffered heavy losses when the monsoon turned out to be a non-starter. The Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, the government's flagship crop insurance scheme, was expected to help them tide over the crisis. It turned out to be a non-starter too
Why farmers now dread a normal monsoon
No major agrarian reform has happened in the 50 years since the Green Revolution. A normal monsoon cannot be assumed as the only incentive for farmers to sustain productivity. It's time India offered its food producers a new deal
Seeds of decline
Frequent pest attacks, rising seed costs and declining returns are forcing farmers to abandon India's first genetically modified (GM) crop, Bt cotton. The trend is catching up worldwide with GM crops. Darshan Desai accesses an exclusive government evaluation and reports from Gujarat; Jitendra explores the fate of farmers in northern India's cotton belt; Mukund Kulkarni tracks rising debt …
Sweet ’n’ sour
Moringa and tamarind are popularly known as the trees of life for Indians. Moringa is in fashion as the world eyes India to feed its frenzy for the new superfood. Hardy tamarind shares the same versatility but struggles to find its way out of the wood. Karnika Bahuguna and Shreeshan Venkatesh travel to the hinterland of eastern and southern India to make sense of this dichotomy
A fishy business
The fish you eat possibly contains a cocktail of antibiotics, fed to it for reasons other than disease treatment, shows an investigation by Rajeshwari Sinha and Amit Khurana. They visit 22 fish farms in West Bengal to find out how rampant is the use of antibiotics and why it goes unnoticed
Going backward
As the Maratha community in Maharashtra finally gets 16 per cent reservation in government jobs and education, Down To Earth profiles other traditionally well-off farming communities who are demanding similar reservations, an offshoot of a deepening agrarian crisis that if ignored can snowball into an explosive situation
Poor monsoon to hit food stock hard
Karnataka was the first state to declare drought
