KEY TRENDS   • Section 105 of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, which provides for excluding 13 Central legislation, including Land Acquisition (Mines) Act 1885, Atomic Energy Act, 1962, Railway Act 1989, National Highways Act 1956 and Metro Railways (Construction of Works) Act, 1978, from its purview, has been amended for payment of compensation with rigours $ • The amendments have now...

REGULARITY and repetition—of returning rains, of seasonal temperatures, of the cycles of life and death—are the essence of agriculture. So perhaps it is not surprising when events recur. In 2007-08, food prices soared. Mozambique and 30 poor countries endured food-price riots. Russia led a procession of grain exporters to restrict sales. And the world had to face up to changes in the pattern of food demand, reversing decades of declining...

FEW rural pleasures match seeing a golden field of grain, rustling and ripe for reaping. But the harvest season in the northern hemisphere is being marked by turmoil on global wheat markets. A big reason is to be found in one of the world’s largest wheat exporters, Russia. Hit by fires and drought which have wiped out a third of the grain crop, the authorities there have banned exports, first temporarily...

Increasingly erratic rainfall patterns related to climate change pose a major threat to food security and economic growth, water experts have said, arguing for greater investment in water storage. In a report by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), experts said Africa and Asia were likely to be hardest hit by unpredictable rainfall, and urged policymakers and farmers to try to find ways of diversifying sources of water. The IWMI...

Agricultural experts today cast a wary eye on the steep rise in the cost of wheat prompted by a Russian export ban and the questions looming over harvests in other parts of the world because of drought or flooding with memories still fresh of food riots set off by spiking prices just two years ago, Food prices rose 5 per cent globally during August, according to the UN, spurred mostly by...