The legacy of Industrial Agriculture With the world population passing the 6 billion mark last October, the debate over our ability to sustain a fast growing population is heating up. Biotechnology advocates in particular are becoming very vocal in their claim that there is no alternative to using genetically modified crops in agriculture if "we want to feed the world". Actually, that quote might be true. It depends what they mean...

Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee will head the promised Group of Ministers (GoM) that will examine the modalities of enumeration of caste in Census 2011, senior government sources told TheHindu. The GoM was constituted on June 4, nine days after the Union Cabinet took a decision to do so. Its 10 other members are the representatives of all the Congress' partners in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA): Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, Defence...

Not so long ago, the prospect of a global sugar shortage gave food manufacturers a panic attack. Poor weather conditions hitting crops in the world's two biggest sugar-producing nations, Brazil and India, sent the price of the sweet stuff soaring on international markets. In August last year, US firms such as Kraft Food, General Mills and chocolate-maker Hershey were so worried that they wrote a joint letter to the country's...

Pratibha urges “out-of-the-box” thinking on agriculture  Involve agricultural economy more pro-actively in growth process Stress on “environment of security” for optimal attainment of growth President Pratibha Patil’s address to the nation on Monday, on the eve of the 61st Republic Day, reflected the common citizen’s worries on two counts: the unyielding price situation and challenges to internal security. She also touched upon climate change, underlining the use of “energy efficient technologies and...

In energy infrastructure alone, the transformational ambitions the Copenhagen meet is expected to set will cost more than $10 trillion in additional investment.  If negotiators reach an accord at the climate talks in Copenhagen it will entail profound shifts in energy production, dislocations in how and where people live, sweeping changes in agriculture and forestry and the creation of complex new markets in global warming pollution credits. So what is...