AP PHOTOS: A day with an Indian farmer who opposes new laws

Ram Singh Patel's day starts at 6 in the morning, when he walks into his farmland tucked next to a railway line. For hours he toils on the farm, where he grows chili peppers, onions, garlic, tomatoes and papayas. Sometimes his wife, two sons and two daughters join him to lend a helping hand or have lunch with him.

Once home after sunset, he packs the cultivated crops in jute bags and cardboard boxes, ready to be driven by a trailer to a nearby wholesale market where the produce is sold.

This is the daily life of Patel, a 55-year-old generational farmer in India’s heartland state of Uttar Pradesh. The life is laborious and repetitive, but it is one of an unknown hero who, like millions of other small farmers, grows grain to feed India's ever-growing population of more than 1.3 billion.

But of late, Patel has been a worried man. His earnings have started to fall. His kids don't want to work on the farm. And he fears that new agricultural laws introduced by Prime Minister Narendra...