Organised farmers' forum for agriculture development in the Darjeeling hill

40% of the area in Darjeeling hill falls under village which means 40% of the land can be cultivated, 22%  are covered under tea plantation and 38% of it are under forest. Agriculture is one of the major source of economic development of the people of the hills.
Agriculture being major source of economic development still do not show any growth. The farmers face the problems of poor irrigation, no access to credits, access to market is still a dream for majority of the farmers, Farmers still adopt the traditional farming methods, cost of input is higher than the output as the productivity is decreasing day by day. On my interactions with farmers I found that soi health has not been done till now and almost all the farmers (51 of them) have never attended any training on agriculture forget about the agriculture loan.
One of the ways farmers can develop agriculture in the hills is through organised farmers' forum. Till now farmers re involved in solo farming. They are least connected and the result is shown in their lack of awareness, lack of knowledge n scientific know how etc. If farmers can come together and engage themselves in organized manner many of the basic problems, from procurement of seed to selling of their produce, they face today can be solved.
Farmers' forum can act in the following framework:

1. Capability development
2. Networking/ linkage
3. Asset mobilization and use
4. Business/ market development and reach

It's Time for Poverty to Have the Spotlight

by Chelsea Wieber
After a few fumbled attempts on their own, global financial leaders gathered in Washington D.C. last weekend to develop a joint plan to prevent the spread of the financial crisis.
Imagine if they focused just a fraction of that attention on alleviating global poverty. After all, high food and fuel prices pushed an additional 75 million people further into poverty this year.
"When food prices peaked and began to come down, despite the fact that conditions within poor countries remained hugely adverse, attention already started to wane," development economist Jeffry Sachs told Reuters. By contrast, the world's finance ministers jumped to commit incredibly large sums of money when credit markets started to fail — a crisis that continues to hold the world's attention.
"The amounts that are needed (to help the poor grow more food) are in the low billions of dollars and we're talking every day now about a new commitment of hundreds of billions for this and hundreds of billions for that," says Sachs. "The truth about poverty is that the poor don't need very much."
In other words, $700 billion — or whatever the astronomical total the worldwide bailout turns out to be — would go a long, long way.