The current theme – September 2025
Vegetable Farming
With shorter growth cycles, multiple harvests, and higher profit margins, vegetable farming offers advantages over traditional field crops, especially to the small holders. Vegetable farming diversifies agriculture, promotes sustainability and encourages the adoption of sustainable farming practices. With rising demand for fresh and nutritious vegetables owing to emphasis on healthier lifestyles, vegetable farming provides opportunities for adopting organic farming practices while leading to gainful employment and higher income.
Vegetable farming offers a unique advantage to small farmers. When smallholder farmers grow high value crop, they can yield better returns. Since vegetables are harvested quickly, 3-4 crops can be cultivated throughout the year to meet the increased demand for vegetables. Vegetable farming entered urban spaces, particularly during the COVID pandemic, proving that urban households too can produce their own vitamin sources.
However, vegetable growers face a plethora of challenges. Besides climate change affecting the production, farmers lose about 25-30% of their produce from farm to market due to various factors like improper timing of sowing, overwatering, harvesting including storage and transportation issues, lack of knowledge and resources, and market constraints. How are farmers overcoming these challenges – those of production, storage and marketing? What technological adoptions are being made to enhance production and income? How are Governments creating an enabling environment with their policy and regulatory frameworks? What are the research and development initiatives helping farmers achieve higher production? In this issue of LEISA India, we would like to include some of the field experiences which could address these issues.
Articles for the September 2025 issue of LEISA India should be sent to the editors before 1st August 2025 to leisaindia@yahoo.co.in
Guide to Authors
LEISA India publishes practical field experiences on sustainable agriculture. The magazine offers an opportunity for those working in agricultural development, particularly in diverse, risk-prone and resource-poor regions, to publish their field experiences and to read about the experiences of others. LEISA India is published four times a year, and each issue deals with a particular theme.
Guidelines
- Articles should fit in the theme of the issue, for which it is being submitted. Kindly read the call for articles and check if the article fits well with the theme.
- Articles should be practical field experiences. Articles which simply describe a technology or a process will not be encouraged for publication.
- Explain any terms or ideas that may not be understood in every part of the world.
- Acknowledge all sources and references used.
- Explain any abbreviations used.
In order to present clear and accessible information, authors are recommended to describe:
- The context – agro ecological, social and environmental
- Challenges and the reasons for the approach taken to improve the situation
- The initiatives – process and nature of initiatives
- Time frames – when did this all happen
- Changes/impact – physical, social, economical, ecological and cultural
- Reasons why things worked out as they did. (We appreciate opinions / analysis / conclusions relevant to field level, as well as recommendations for policy makers).
Full editorial support is provided. As the articles go through a rigorous editorial process, authors are usually requested to provide additional information or clarifications.
Format
- The length of the articles should be within 2500 words.
- Articles should be submitted as a soft copy in Microsoft Word format.
- Mention for which issue/theme is the article being submitted
- Include no more than three references (any references should include at least year of publication, name of author, and publisher);
- Provide a current contact address, at the bottom of the article itself. This will also be published in the magazine.
- Include 2-6 photos, relevant to the article, providing suitable captions. Photos should be sent as separate image files. Image files should be of good resolution (file size should be a minimum of 500 kb). Provide photo credits, wherever applicable.
The editors reserve the right to decide whether or not to publish an article or contribution, after receipt of the first full draft. Articles that are accepted will be edited to LEISA India house style and shortened if necessary. Articles accepted for publication in LEISA India English edition may be chosen for translation and publication in any of the seven regional editions of LEISA India.
