Empowering Small Farmers in India through Organic Agriculture and Biodiversity Conservation

This PhD dissertation from University of Connecticut investigates how local farming organizations enable and empower small farmers to become independent and selfsufficient. The study contributes to a growing understanding among small farmers, researchers and international human rights and farming-focused organizations (e.g., the United Nations Human Rights Council and the Food and Agriculture Organization), of how reinvestment in sustainable agriculture is vital to the realization of the right to food, and to rural economic development, issues that were accentuated by the 2008 global food price crisis and current return to a pattern of rising food prices that are reaching 2008 levels.