-IPS News Bhubaneswar: More than a month after Cyclone Phailin battered Orissa, tribes in the eastern Indian coastal state are still feeling its wrath. Besides the damage to their homes and hearths, it has also meant a loss of their traditional food. "Calamities like Cyclone Phailin affect all equally, but the tribes are far more vulnerable to the impact of calamities because of lesser resilience," Special Relief Commissioner P.K. Mahapatra tells IPS. This...
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Back from the brink -M Suchitra
-Down to Earth A Kerala village grows organic pokkali rice after 25 years Harvest of pokkali rice in Kerala's Ezhupunna village, which began on October 27 and lasted three weeks, was nothing short of a local event. After all, the indigenous, saline and flood-resistant rice variety was cultivated in the village after 25 years. People in the village had to wage a long battle to be able to cultivate the crop once...
More »World must sustainably produce 70 per cent more food by mid-century –UN report
-The United Nations The world will need 70 per cent more food, as measured by calories, to feed a global population of 9.6 billion in 2050, and must achieve this through improvements in the way people produce and consume, according to a report released today by the United Nations and its partners. "Over the next several decades, the world faces a grand challenge - and opportunity - at the intersection of food...
More »UP farmers' protest over cane arrears turns violent -Swati Mathur
-The Times of India LUCKNOW: A day after sugarcane farmer Satyapal Singh killed himself in Bastauli village of Lakhimpur Kheri, around 200 villagers stormed into the compound of Balrampur Sugar Mill's Buleria unit, protesting against the non-payment of cane arrears. The farmers, who said they intended to cremate Singh's body at the gates of the sugar mill, also vandalised the factory compound, looted the canteen and beat up the mill's chief security...
More »UP sugar mills run 'ponzi scheme' to pay farmers' dues -Anil Sasi
-The Indian Express On the surface, the sugar crisis in Uttar Pradesh may seem to be inching closer to a resolution. But cane farmers may have unwittingly mortgaged their land, signing up for crop loans from public sector banks, with the money so raised being used by the mills to pay arrears of a different set of farmers. This model, of mills rotating working capital loans from banks, to deliver pending payouts...
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