-The Times of India BANGALORE: The newly-elected Congress government in Karnataka has decided not to allow a ban on cow slaughter in the state. The Karnataka Prevention of cow slaughter and Preservation (Amendment) Bill, 2012 passed in the state legislature during the BJP rule would be reversed. "We will go back to the Karnataka Prevention of Cow Slaughter and Cattle Prevention Act, 1964. We will withdraw the bill amended last year," chief...

-The United Nations     While insects can be slimy, cringe-inducing creatures, often squashed on sight by humans, a new book released today by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) says beetles, wasps and caterpillars are also an unexplored nutrition source that can help address global food insecurity. The book, Edible Insects: future prospects for food and feed security, stresses not just the nutritional value of insects, but also the benefits that insect farming...

-The Guardian Farms processing insects for animal feed might soon become global reality as demand grows for sustainable feed sources   The best way to feed the 9 billion people expected to be alive by 2050 could be to rear billions of common houseflies on a diet of human faeces and abattoir blood and grind them up to use as animal feed, a UN report published on Monday suggests. Doing so would...

-The Hindu   Investment in a scheme that guarantees rural employment with minimum wages should be seen as complementary and not alternative to development activities A recent paper by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) has argued that the "push" factors of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) are not as important as the economic growth "pull" factors, for increasing agricultural wages. The paper has received wide media...

-The Hindu Business Line   In much of the discussion on the turnaround after the Great Recession, attention has been focused on financial consolidation and the halting return to growth. Far less attention has been paid to the persistence of high and even rising unemployment and its sources. In the desperate search for evidence that the global recession has bottomed out and the recovery has arrived, the story told by the long-term trend...