Agriculture
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How a small, sleepy town in Karnataka turned into the vegetable nursery of India
A ThePlate.in story on Ranebennur in Karnataka, which became India’s centre for hybrid vegetable seed production from the late 1970s and now supports about Rs 500 crore of seed output…
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MS Swaminathan: architect of Green Revolution; the greatest Indian since Gandhi
The author argues that M. S. Swaminathan, architect of the Green Revolution, is the greatest Indian since Independence, having built institutions and helped 800 million people escape hunger, and says…
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West Africa’s bitter chocolate harvest is a sweet deal for farmers in south India
A teaser for a ThePlate.in story on cocoa farmers in Tamil Nadu asking whether they can benefit as global cocoa prices more than triple because of West African crop failures,…
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Farmers vs Government: The Benefits and Limits of Democratic Redistribution
The author argues that India’s democracy let its large farming population keep a steady share of redistribution during globalisation-led growth, unlike one-party China and Vietnam, where farm incomes fell relative…
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Moneylenders & Indian farmers
X.T.M shares his father-in-law’s trade correspondence on Indian agriculture: fragmented smallholdings, a Green Revolution that favoured rice and wheat, weekly grain markets and exploitative moneylenders, with farm debt and suicides…
