Browsing Tag: Farmers

According to the survey, 85% farmers (including both in the marginal as well as the large category) are under debt.

Didar Singh Bains, the legendary “peach king of California,” remains optimistic even as a severe California drought threatens to wipe out the $58 million agricultural business that his family has built up over seven generations.

[VIDEO] Activist and award winning filmmaker Harpreet Kaur has made another amazing film. 'A Little Revolution' tells the story of some that should not be forgotten: The children of farmers who have committed suicide.

The amendment in the Punjab Village Common Land (Regulation) Act would come as a relief to a number of Sikh families of Kaithal and Kurukshetra facing prospects of eviction.

Maisuradze said the unusual scene from that day months ago are etched in her memory, as she never imagined she'd have so many neighbours from a land so far away.

Singh, 38, is one of a new wave of farmers pioneering one of the world's more unlikely migrations. During a recent spell as a cook in Düsseldorf, Germany, he heard about thousands of acres of fertile land on former collective farms lying fallow in Georgia for want of manpower.

It’s the first time in three or four years that winter wheat has been seeded, and it’s a good move for the region’s farmers, he said.

They often are forbidden from opening savings accounts, borrowing money, or even selling crops at market. And what is the basis for these self-defeating practices? It is the simple fact that these farmers happen to be women.

"The crisis in Punjab is very deep," said Sanjay Sharma, the regional bureau chief for the Times of India newspaper. Since the early 1990s, successive state governments had failed to grasp the importance of industrialization, he said.

The first African Sikh MP, whose family was among a very few who did not leave Uganda, and was considered a favourite of despot Idi Amin during 1970s, wants Punjabi farmers to cultivate land in the east African country that is now becoming a passage to entire east Africa after South Sudan became a new country recently.

One measure of their presence was the inauguration last month of the Gurduwara Sri Guru Kalgidhar Sahib, touted as the largest Sikh temple in Continental Europe.

Over the past 15 years, a scourge of suicides has claimed the lives of an estimated 250,000 farmers in India. And the death count is still climbing, according to a new report by the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at New York University. “On average, one farmer commits suicide every 30 minutes in India,” said Smita Narula, director of the CHRGJ

When Prince Charles had last visited Bhatmajra village of this district in Punjab in March 2006, he had given a dream of organic farming to the farmers but the dream seems turning sore for many progressive farmers who have lost interest due to lack of support from present SAD-BJP government.

Nijjer told the media persons that after seeing the immense damage in the Patiala areas on television, he couldn’t resist visiting India. “After visiting the flood-hit villages, I decided to help the affected farmers in the best possible manner.

Mandip Kaur, a 29-year-old housewife from a farming family in southern Punjab, guards her husband round the clock. "I fear he may commit suicide," she says in broken Hindi.

Historically rich land containing the last vestiges of the Anglo-Sikh wars of the mid-19th century is being lost to agriculture.

Now, Mongolia wants the services of Punjab farmers for attaining self-sufficiency in food.

With the right technology and policies, India could help feed the world. Instead, it can barely feed itself.

The Punjab government has finally allocated funds to assess the breadth of farmer suicides in the state.