-The Conversation Resource-intensive agriculture, despite its productivity, nevertheless has failed to feed the world's current population, never mind the nine billion people expected by 2050. This system that currently fails both people and planet is ripe for revision. We need to be more ambitious, to go beyond simply producing more. We need to produce more of what's good - not just cereal staples, but nutrition-dense foods - in ways that can prevent...

-The New Indian Express   Most people would have been shocked to read the year-end report that India has been ranked 63rd, much below countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, on the Global Hunger Index (GHI), a yardstick used by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) to comprehensively measure global hunger. The index is calculated as an average of three indices-undernourishment, underweight children and low child mortality rate-and is measured on a...

-The Hindustan Times Misunderstandings about the World Trade Organization (WTO) are pervasive. The media coverage of the recent WTO meetings at Bali has added to the confusion. The bone of contention was the government procurement of the food grains in India under the National Food Security Act. The final outcome is a stopgap arrangement that has bought the Indian government some time; most importantly, it does not have to undertake any...

-The Indian Express Kutch (Gujarat): Bhajan Singh, 62, remembers the time curious villagers turned up to see a borewell his father Gopal Singh had dug up. The year was 1969 and it was the first time Sumrasar village, near Bhuj in Kutch district, had had a borewell. Few had ever seen it work, as they depended entirely on rainwater for the barely one crop they harvested a year. Originally from Pakistan, Gopal...

-Economic and Political Weekly   Coarse cereals such as pearl millet and sorghum, the hardiest and least risky cereals, are mainly grown in India's arid and semi-arid regions. These crops possess high nutritive and fodder value and are primarily consumed by their producers. On the supply side, there has been a large shift in the area under cultivation to rice and wheat and other commercial crops. On the demand side, the distribution...