-Livemint.com Healthy, living soil is the most essential element in ensuring food security. Yet it is often ignored by policy planners The global population, which stood at 6.1 billion in 2000, is estimated to reach 8.5 billion by 2030 and 9.7 billion in 2050. India has 2.4% of the world’s arable land and more than 17% of the global population. Meeting the demand for fibre and food to feed this growing population...

-Deccan Chronicle Residue exceeding permissible levels found in 100 out of 1,920 samples. Visakhapatnam: Andhra Pradesh and Telangana account for a hefty 24 per cent share of pesticide consumption in the country. The two states are grappling with increased pesticide residue in food commodities, while pesticides can help repel insects, pests and other diseases, their excessive/irrational use can lead to health hazards, ecological disturbance and disruption, increased pesticide resistance, etc. The adverse...

-Livemint.com We don’t know enough about the socio-economic status of different caste groups, and our political class doesn’t want us to know Over the past couple of years, one Indian state after another has been on the boil because of caste-based agitations. The latest state to be engulfed in caste conflict is Maharashtra, where a stir by the dominant caste of Marathas seems to have led other backward classes (OBCs) and...

-The Indian Express The opposition’s main contention is that the GM mustard hybrid incorporates three alien genes — barnase, barstar and bar — rendering it inherently unsafe for human and animal health. Fifty years ago, Union Minister for Food and Agriculture Chidambaram Subramaniam took the decision to import 18,000 tonnes of seeds of Lerma Rojo 64A and Sonora 64 wheat from Mexico. The seeds arrived just in time for their planting in...

-AFP Rome: Climate change could sink up to 122 million more people into extreme poverty by 2030, mostly in South Asia and Africa, where small farmers would see their output plummet, the UN warned Monday. In an annual report, the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) warned that a worst-case scenario involving high-impact climate change would pound the communities that rely on agriculture for their livelihood. It called for a “broad-based transformation of...