Freshwater appropriation can have vast impacts, depending on management and scale of water use. Since 2000, foreign investors have contracted an area the size of the United Kingdom in Africa, leading to increased pressure on water resources. Here we couple site-specific water demand for the crops planted there to the efficiency of different irrigation systems, while relating these estimates to local water availability.

An Investigation into police and landlord repression of land struggle by dalit peasants in villages of Sangrur District of Indian Punjab.

There is an increasing importance of landowning households that do not cultivate and a significant presence of urban households owning rural land, which constrains the growth of the agrarian economy, as such households have low incentives to invest in agriculture, and tend to use land for residential purposes, reducing the cropped area. Agricultural labour households tend to lease in land and become cultivators.

With changing agricultural business environment, the conventional direct marketing method is becoming a less feasible option for small and marginal farmers due to emergence of supermarkets, increasing consumers’ preference for value-added food products, high production and marketing cost associated with small scale of operations and increasing consumers’ emphasis on quality, safety and appearance of the product. Hence farmers must enter into a value chain in order to adapt to the changing business environment.