Word: cottoning
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Thakare, like nearly all the farmers in this arid region of Vidarbha in the state of Maharashtra, is dependent on India's annual monsoon to provide the water necessary to grow his cotton and soybeans. A failed monsoon meant disaster. Without the rain, the crops withered, and so did his primary source of income. Every year, all Thakare could do as the midyear planting season approached was wait and hope that the monsoon would deliver enough rain so he could support his family. (Read "Hungry? How About Some Protein-Rich Cotton...
...rural-resource management - collects water from the monsoon rains that would otherwise have just been wasted. By capturing and storing rainwater, the pond helps to fill the farm's wells. With a more reliable supply of water, Thakare's productivity soared. Not only did he plant his usual summer cotton crop last year, but he also had enough water to grow an entirely new crop of sunflowers during the winter. The pond, he says, helped double his usual output of lentils as well. The added sales put an extra $1,000 in his pocket, which he saved as a nest...
...improve the lot of the nation's farmers. Between the 2003-04 and 2008-09 fiscal years, the central government's budget for agriculture quadrupled. Government schemes built rural roads to help farmers get their produce to market, forgave some of their debts and raised minimum purchase prices on cotton, rice and other crops. In 2005, policymakers launched the Bharat Nirman program, aimed at providing electricity, housing and irrigation systems to the country's farmers, and, a year later, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, which promised at least 100 days of work each year for poor farming households, often...
...progress the government has made so far. Nearly $39 million has been spent subsidizing high-yield seeds, Mulay says, plus $24 million on developing fruit orchards and other pricey produce, and another $24 million on building micro-irrigation projects. As Mulay drives down narrow roads through Vidarbha's cotton fields, he stops his jeep every few miles to show off the government's handiwork. First, he marches up a muddy hillside to a small dam the government built to help farmers preserve monsoon rainwater - one of more than 9,000 constructed in the region over the past three years. Next...
...Kishor Tiwari believes the farmers require much more than that. The Nagpur-based activist, whose organization, the Vidarbha People's Protest Forum, has championed the region's cotton growers, says that the package has alleviated some of the farmers' distress. But Tiwari says that more government intervention is needed to solve the real underlying problem: a global agricultural market rigged against the small tiller. While the costs of crucial inputs, like fertilizer, have been rising, global prices for cotton are being depressed to an artificially low level by U.S.-government subsidies for its cotton farmers - a one-two punch...