-Economic and Political Weekly   Chhattisgarh's public distribution system reforms have been lauded as a model for the National Food Security Act, and as one that other states can emulate. Previous research has shown that PDS rice consumption increased in Chhattisgarh following reforms by the Raman Singh government, which began in 2004. However, one-third of PDS rice consumption growth in Chhattisgarh took place before 2004. This finding suggests that the pre-2004 reforms...

-Deccan Herald Instead of reducing the usage, molecular breeders are conveniently dovetailing pesticides tolerance into GM crop varieties. It's a strange paradox. While the demand for organic food is rising unequivocally in the rich and developed countries as well as in the major developing countries, the use of chemical pesticides in agriculture is also growing at a phenomenal pace. The organic food industry in the US is relatively new. At a time when...

-Outlook Shillong: More than 18 years after it was rolled out in Meghalaya, the mid-day meal scheme has failed to keep children in schools or provide dietary nutrition - the two objectives of the centrally-sponsored scheme. A survey of the schools in the state where the scheme was launched in 1995 discovered that over 50 per cent children still suffered from stunted growth and that the food served is mostly deficient in...

-The World Bank WASHINGTON: Aquaculture - or fish farming - will provide close to two thirds of global food fish consumption by 2030 as catches from wild capture fisheries level off and demand from an emerging global middle class, especially in China, substantially increases. These are among the key findings of "Fish to 2030: Prospects for Fisheries and Aquaculture" - a collaboration between the World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization of the...

A new report by National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS) reveals that despite the nutritional value of millets, otherwise known as coarse cereals*, there has been a drastic reduction in the area under its cultivation from 36.34 million hectares in 1955-56 to 18.6 million hectares in 2011-12 thanks to the wrong agricultural and price policies adopted by the Government (see table 1, and the links below). Based on previous National...