With a gas-guzzler of an economy, India had been spending tens of billions of dollars annually to import petroleum. And so its 2009 policy on biofuels mandated that by 2017, India would have enough biofuel production to cover at least 20 percent of the country’s oil consumption. The government has in fact been encouraging the cultivation of jatropha curcas for the past seven years, believing that would be the fastest way...

India’s monsoon rains were 19% above normal in the week to 15 Sept., the weather office said on Thursday, feeding concern cotton and groundnut harvests could be further delayed in Asia’s third-largest economy. “The monsoon withdrawal is unlikely at least in the next couple of days,” said a senior official of the weather office who did not wish to be named. Rains had already exceeded averages by 26% in the previous week. Signs...

The neo-colonial rush for global farmland has gone exponential since the food scare of 2007-2008. Last week's long-delayed report by the World Bank suggests that purchases in developing countries rose to 45m hectares in 2009, a ten-fold jump from levels of the last decade. Two thirds have been in Africa, where institutions offer weak defence. As is by now well-known, sovereign wealth funds from the Mid-East, as well as state-entities from China,...

The goal of food for all can be achieved only through sustained efforts in producing, saving and sharing foodgrains. The Supreme Court of India has rendered great service by arousing public, professional and political concern about the co-existence of rotting grain mountains and mounting hungry mouths. In several African countries hunger is increasing because food is either not available in the market, or is too expensive for the poor. Food inflation...

Canada hosted this year’s G-20 and as a follow-up it had a conference for Speakers of Second Chambers—or of unicameral ones where relevant—from September 2-5. The theme was Food Security and Financial Crisis. The burden of the speeches was predictable. Food security for most people is about agriculture and its protection. It is about food production and everyone wished they could grow more food. Others took a neo-Malthusian line that the...