Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee today said that the government will enact a legislation to provide subsidised wheat and rice to poor, but to make it a success there is a need to boost production and strengthen delivery system. "We are committed to ensure Food Security Act and to make successful, we need to produce more, procure more and strengthen delivery mechanism for making accessible and affordable," Mukherjee said while addressing...

A demand to reintroduce a universal Public Distribution System (PDS) in the country appears every now and then. Its proponents argue that universal access is necessary for ensuring food security, for better control on prices and for eliminating (at least partially) the evils of exclusion errors in the targeted PDS. The question is: what are the operational implications of access for all citizens to subsidised foodgrain? They are currently allocated as...

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have warned that farm commodity prices, especially foodgrains, may rise by as much as 40 per cent by the end of this decade. This warning must be taken seriously given its implications for food insecurity. FAO’s Agricultural Outlook 2010-2019 projects prices of wheat, coarse grains and dairy products rising by 15 to 40 per cent...

An analysis of the remote sensing data collected by Nasa satellites on the changes in vegetation in India during the last 25 years has confirmed the bad news: The growth rate of Foodgrain production in India has been stagnant in the last decade, which crop statisticians have been aware of for some time now. A nine-member team of scientists from Nasa, the Boston University and the Indian Institute of Tropical...

CUDDALORE: As labour shortage has been “daunting the farm sector,” the Joint Action Council of farmers' associations has appealed to the government to review the implementation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (MGNREG) Scheme that takes away a major chunk of the workforce. The JAC, which met here on Monday , adopted a resolution. It said that besides the vagaries of weather, what was hindering the growth of the farm sector...