Women constitute approximately 70% of the agricultural labour force and perform more than 70% of farm labour in less industrialised Asia. In India, women constitute approximately 50% of agricultural and livestock workers. A general pattern in India and throughout Asia is that the poorer the area, the higher women's contribution, largely as subsistence farmers who work small pieces of land of less than 0.2 hectares.
This is an interesting report. look at the partners - KAU, an IFFCO subsidiary and Bharti Airtel. Also, the telecom company is promoting a 'green SIM' card free to Kerala farmers. What else does IKSL - the IFFCO subsidiary - do?
Here we go with the Second Advance Estimates of crop production for 2009-10. This is part of the spreadsheet I maintain - it goes back to 1997-98. This selection is for 2008-10 so that it fits in this space:
The revision of poverty estimates will have a wide and deep impact on our understanding of agriculture and its place in the rural livelihoods circle. The Report of the Expert Group to Review the Methodology for Estimation of Poverty (Planning Commission, November 2009) is now out and it has already shaken up the 'official' figures.
An important report has been released by Allianz, a leading global financial service provider, and WWF, a leading global environmental NGO. Both do work (commercial and conservation respectively) in India. The report is titled: 'Major Tipping Points in the Earth’s Climate System and Consequences for the Insurance Sector'.
In 12 states there are 299 districts which have been declared by their state governments as affected by drought.
We know which districts these are, and the central and state governments have announced repeatedly since September 2009 what measures are being taken to lessen the impacts of crop losses and livelihood shock.
