About a third of all the food produced for human consumption each year – or roughly 1.3 billion tons – is lost or wasted, according to a new study commissioned by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The study, compiled by the Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology and unveiled today, finds that food waste is more of a problem in rich countries and food loss during production is...
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Time For New Approaches says Civil Society by Claire Ngozo
The dominant approaches to development have failed the world’s poorest citizens and now the paradigm must change. This is the strong message coming from over 2,000 non-governmental organisations gathered at the civil society forum for the Fourth U.N. Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC-IV) in Istanbul, Turkey. Arjun Karki, spokesperson for the forum, told the gathering that the failure to see more LDC countries graduate from this most vulnerable classification...
More »NAC member flays food bill ‘corruption’
A member of the Sonia Gandhi-headed National Advisory Council today said the delay in enacting the food security law amounted to “corruption”. “The food security bill is delayed. This is corruption,” Aruna Roy said at a seminar here, strongly pitching for legal guarantees on food security to every citizen in the country. The draft bill finalised by the NAC seeks to provide subsidised grain to up to 75 per cent of the...
More »Different rules for different people by Bahar Dutt
On the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, India announced that it would go ahead with the planned nuclear power plant at Jaitapur, Maharashtra. Even the media, which could have kept up the pressure on the government, dismissed the protests by the local people in Jaitapur as one incited by the Shiv Sena and so not worthy of any attention. While I am no Sena supporter, it is difficult...
More »Bonus turns bane for MP's farmers by Rukmini Shrinivasan
As Madhya Pradesh begins to harvest a bumper wheat crop, the state is finding that measures put in place to ensure that the powerful do not game the system are having the unintended effect of keeping out the most marginalised. In anticipation of a bumper harvest, the MP government announced a Rs 100 bonus that it would pay wheat farmers above the central government-fixed Minimum Support Price of Rs 1,120. "It...
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