Global economic and financial crisis (2007-2008) coupled with food and fuel crises (2006-2008) has pushed the number of undernourished in the world to 1.02 billion during 2009, This has happened despite international food commodity prices declining from their earlier peaks, finds a newly released report of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO, www.fao.org) titled: The State of Food Insecurity in the World Report 2009: Economic Crises-Impacts and Lessons Learnt....

Brazil and China have been praised for their efforts to tackle hunger, in a development charity's report released to coincide with UN World Food Day. But the ActionAid report criticises India and others countries for not doing enough to alleviate the problem. The agency also ranked rich countries, saying Luxembourg is trying hardest to end global hunger, while the US and New Zealand rank bottom. Studies estimate that one billion...

Concerted efforts have been made to give a new lease of life to the Doha Round of WTO negotiations. The question before us is: what is the most relevant role which this revived round of trade talks can play? If we take an overview of the entire international trade scene and the changes that have taken place ever since the WTO was created (including the negotiations which preceded the WTO’s...

The economic turmoil sweeping the globe has lead to a sharp spike in hunger affecting the world’s poorest, uncovering a fragile global food system requiring urgent reform, according to a report issued today by two United Nations agencies. The combination of the food and economic crises have pushed more people into hunger, with the number of hungry expected to top 1 billion this year, according to the Food and Agriculture...

South Asia will be badly hit by declining crop yields stemming from climate change, a report by the International Food Policy Research Institute (Ifpri) has found ahead of a food security summit next month. Another study, released by the Food and Agricultural Organization on Thursday, also said that farm yields will be adversely affected by global warming. The Ifpri report—made public on Wednesday—analysed 32 crops and livestock commodities in 281...