-The Business Standard   Remember the food riots of 2008? Is the world heading towards another food crisis? That, worryingly, seems to be the conclusion that a new publication on food prices and availability in the next decade (2011-20), issued jointly by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (oecd) and the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), arrives at. The oecd-FAO report forecasts agricultural commodity prices, in real terms,...

-PTI   Global food prices are expected to be higher in the 2011-20 period compared with the previous decade and this could have a “devastating” impact on the poor in developing countries, an oecd-FAO report has said. “Higher food prices and volatility in commodity markets are here to stay,” Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (oecd) and Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said in a joint report released today. The report ‘oecd-FAO Agriculture...

The World Health Organisation says disabled people more likely to be denied healthcare and less likely to find work. The proportion of disabled people is rising and now stands at one billion, or 15 per cent of the global population, according to the first official global report on disability. An ageing population and an increase in chronic health conditions, such as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, mean the proportion has grown from...

Yes, food prices are rising but more competition is not the answer — it's time to stop over-consumption. Slowly, surely, a new mixture of consensus and fault lines is emerging about world food. On the one hand, there is agreement we are entering a new era in which basic agricultural commodity prices are rising after decades of falling. This will hit the poorest hardest, as an Oxfam report this week on...

The United Nations began laying the groundwork today for a global “social protection floor” that would guarantee food security, health services for all and old-age pensions, with a senior official stressing that all that is lacking is the political will for an initiative needing minimum investment. “Social security is a human right. We’ve forgotten that for a very long time, but roughly only 20 per cent of the global population has...