Lashing out at the United Progressive Alliance-II for following anti-people policies and not even sparing school-going children in the general budget by levying taxes on their textbooks and stationary, Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Brinda Karat on Thursday urged the government not to blame the poor for the food inflation. “By attributing the rise in prices to increasing consumption by the poor, the government is putting the blame for food...

Small-scale farmers can double food production in a decade by using simple ecological methods, according to the findings of a new United Nations study released today, which calls for a fundamental shift towards agroecology as a poverty alleviation measure. “To feed 9 billion people in 2050, we urgently need to adopt the most efficient farming techniques available,” says Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and...

If women in rural areas had the same access to land, technology, financial services, education and markets as men, agricultural production could be increased and the number of hungry people reduced by 100-150 million, FAO said today in its 2010-11 edition of The State of Food and Agriculture report. Yields on plots managed by women are lower than those managed by men, the report said. But this is not because women...

Cash transfers cannot and should not replace the public provision of essential goods and services, but rather supplement them. Cash transfers are the latest fad of the international development industry, as the preferred strategy for poverty reduction. And now Indian policymakers are busy catching up. The idea was mooted in the Government's Economic Survey for 2010-11, and the Finance Minister made an explicit announcement in his budget speech for replacing some...

The zero-budget natural farming propounded by Subash Palekar has reached Sri Lanka. The natural farming technique that is fast-catching up with the farmers in South India has been taken up by farmers in the neighbouring nation. Sharath Fernando from Sri Lanka, who partook in a meet of farmers from South Asia at Bangalore, said the Sri Lankan government is supporting the initiative. According to him, farmers in his homeland are facing...