Times of India – Online

Prominent novelist and essayist Arundhati Royon on Saturday came out in support of the farmers who are agitating on Delhi borders, and said the new farm laws which they are opposing will help only the corporate sector.

Speaking at Elgar Parishad, a conclave, here, Roy also slammed the BJP governments at the centre and in states over issues such as anti-conversion laws and lockdown. “It is very important for us to stand by the farmers,” the Man Booker award-winning writer said.

“The new agriculture laws will break the backbone of the farm sector and give the control to the corporates,” she said, alleging that the Union government was trying to discredit the agitation. Roy referred ...

Nation – Online

To make food accessible and affordable, there is a need to focus on making modern technology for precision agriculture affordable to farmers to enhance productivity, and this requires revisiting the custom tariff imposed on several imported technologies, including seeds and micro-irrigation systems.

In turn, this would help towards the adoption of such technology by farmers contributing to the overall agricultural economy and food security.

This was noted in an article titled “A 60-day battle to tackle food security: Response of the Sri Lankan Government to the Covid-19 pandemic” authored by B. Marambe and P. Silva attached to the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Peradeniya, and published recently in the Sri Lanka Journal of Food and ...

Outlook – Online

The Chief Justice of India’s recent remarks suggesting women have no place in the ongoing farmers’ protests may have gone unnoticed in the 1960s. Today they appear astonishing in their lack of awareness about what the face of the Indian farmer looks like. Women are protesting alongside men because they too have stakes in the outcomes. Indeed, their stakes are bigger—in rural India, 73 per cent of female workers (and only 55 per cent of male workers) depend on agriculture. It’s high time women farmers were seen and heard in their own right by policy-makers and law enforcers. After all, they are the backbone of India’s agriculture and allied sectors, performing a wide range of tasks in ...

Times of India – Online

The parable of ‘blind men and an elephant’ increasingly seems to represent India’s agriculture policies, just as it previously did for India’s Industrialization.

Planning in silos coupled with tenured postings has denied India policy continuity, accountability and efficacy. Despite overwhelming precedence, Indian policy makers have failed to recognise that ensuring rural growth demands a multipronged policy thrust. Over 55% India resides in villages. Shifting rural youth to industrial or construction jobs; innovation in sustainable farm technologies, finance and productivity; vocational education and training and finally storage, logistics and accessible markets must all tango in tandem. Only then does rural growth move the wheels of consumption resulting in sustained GDP growth.

Japan, Taiwan and Korea followed the British ...