-The Hindu That one-third of the food produced annually for human consumption is wasted is in itself unconscionable in a world where 870 million, or one in eight people, go hungry every day. A United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation report now says that this high volume of wastage that occurs right through the food supply chain exerts an adverse impact on land, water, biodiversity and climate change. This impact...

-The Economic Times PUNE: Anand Ostwal, 30-year-old farmer from Satana in Nashik district, who had given last chance to farming after having failed for a decade, is holding on to 500 quintal onions in the hope of buying a car. "If I get a price of Rs 50/kg for the 500 quintal onions, I will get bonus amount of Rs 5 lakh to buy a car. Otherwise, I will have to drop...

-FAO Direct economic costs of $750 billion annually - Better policies required, and "success stories" need to be scaled up and replicated Rome: The waste of a staggering 1.3 billion tonnes of food per year is not only causing major economic losses but also wreaking significant harm on the natural resources that humanity relies upon to feed itself, says a new FAO report. Food Wastage Footprint: Impacts on Natural Resources is the first...

-The Telegraph Kolkata: The Mamata Banerjee government today announced a scheme to allow big private investors to directly procure farm produce - a segment that Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee could not liberate from the stranglehold of the Forward Bloc. The scheme titled Brihat Krishak Bazar Yojana, which loosely translates into mega farmer market programme, seeks to "connect the local market to high-growth demand centres" and weed out middlemen. The project will allow private developers to...

-The Hindu     Questioning a technology, especially of the kind that has serious unknowns and lacks clear social benefits, is not an attack on science Jairam Ramesh, former Environment Minister for India, made the brave decision in 2010 to tell his then apex regulator of genetically modified organisms (GEAC) that it had failed to properly use available science to determine the safety - to human health and the environment - of Bt brinjal,...