-Reuters The amount of land needed to grow crops worldwide is at a peak and an area more than twice the size of France can return to nature by 2060 due to rising yields and slower population growth, a group of experts said on Monday. The report, conflicting with U.N. studies that say more cropland will be needed in coming decades to avert Hunger and price spikes as the world population rises...

Should they be targeted? Should they go to individuals or households? Are conditionalities necessary? Without a full consideration of these issues, cash transfers will remain an expensive gamble Having worked on cash transfers for over 25 years, and being an economist, I find recent criticisms of the idea shrill and ill-informed. Only a right-wing ideologue would call them a panacea or a cure-all. They would merely be a vast improvement on...

-The Hindu United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Saturday launched the Delhi government’s ambitious food security programme, ‘Dilli Annshree Yojana’, a direct benefit transfer system and described it as a first-of-its-kind food security scheme integrated with the UID Aadhar in the country. Ms. Gandhi asserted that the scheme, under which a monthly cash subsidy of Rs. 600 will be directly transferred to the bank account of the seniormost female member of...

-Outlook       After Odisha and Tripura, West Bengal has opposed the Centre's direct cash transfer to bank accounts of beneficiaries claiming it would lead to breakdown of the existing public distribution system and closure of the Food Corporation of India. "The basic objective of the public distribution system to arrest Hunger among the poor will be defeated if the beneficiaries are provided cash instead of cheap food leading to closure of the...

-Frontline Farmers protest against the Central clearance for coal bed methane exploration in Mannargudi, Tamil Nadu, as they fear it will devastate agriculture in Tiruvarur and Thanjavur districts.  THE woes of the delta farmers of Tamil Nadu are far from over. While the Cauvery tangle continues unresolved, they fear the proposed multi-crore project for commercial exploration and exploitation of coal bed methane (CBM) in the Mannargudi block of Tiruvarur district will prove...