Economists across the world are expressing concern about rising food prices. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization recently released its Food Price Index. The list showed that a number of foods cost more than during the world food crisis of two thousand eight. The index is at its highest level since it began in nineteen ninety. Demonstrations and deadly food riots have broken out this month, as they did in...

In India, people are upset about onions. Expensive cooking oil is causing hoarding in China, a practice banned by the government. Meanwhile, flour and bread are the main source of riots in Algeria and now Jordan. Worries over food prices are gathering pace and triggering alarm among politicians across the world. For there is nothing more likely to bring down a government than ignoring starving citizens, as Marie Antoinette found to...

The Bihar government has launched an "organic farming promotion programme" for the cultivation of organic crops in all the districts of the state. The government has decided to develop 38 "organic grams (organic villages)" for which a sum of Rs 255 crore has been sanctioned for five years. Some of these villages are: Dahour (Patna), Sartha (Nalanda), Belsand (Gopalganj), Gaighat Jaata (Muzaffarpur), Rajapaakar (Vaishali) and Narpatganj (Araria). This programme is being run...

The farmers in Madhya Pradesh are feeling devastated and over a half-a-dozen of them have even committed suicide in a short span of time in different parts of the state.   In the last one month, farmers have committed suicide in villages across Bhopal, Sehore, Chhindwara, Damoh, and Sagar districts. The farmers’ plight had surfaced in a big way when thousands of farmers under the banner of Bharatiya Kisan Sangh had converged...

The Centre has decided to send a team of the Planning Commission to the State to find out the reason behind large number farmer suicides. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told this to a group of Youth Congress leaders from the State, led by president Pradip Majhi, who met him in Delhi on Saturday. The delegation told the Prime Minister that more than 2,000 farmers had committed suicide in Orissa during last 10...