FAO has warned that 2011 may witness a global food crisis. Proactive action is needed to meet the challenge of price volatility, chronic hunger, agrarian despair and climate change. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) has alerted developing countries about possible steep rises in food prices during 2011, if steps are not taken immediately to increase significantly the production of major food crops. According to FAO, “with...

Chandrababu Naidu has managed to do outside the Andhra Assembly what he couldn’t within its four walls — train the national spotlight on the plight of farmers crippled by successive national calamities and inadequate compensation. The Telugu Desam president, who has been on indefinite hungerstrike at the new MLA quarters since Friday demanding higher compensation for farmers, was today forcibly taken into custody in the wee hours after a seven-hour drama...

Retail giants pushing the European Union-India free trade deal promise consumers a "new and dynamic retail experience" but ignore the fate of India’s "mom-and-pop" stores and some 40 million people they employ. Four years in the making, the EU-India Bilateral Trade and Investment Agreement made serious headway during Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Brussels Dec. 10 and is due to be signed and sealed early 2011. But the negotiations have...

Over 300 workers from the Hindustan Insecticides Limited plant manufacturing Endosulfan near Kochi at Kerala organised a rally today to oppose the unscientific approach adopted by environmental NGOs to seek ban on Endosulfan. The workers demanded that their own experience and the farmers’ experience be taken into consideration as they work with the pesticide Endosulfan. Endosulfan was manufactured and used for more than 50 years across the world and continues to...

Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda on Wednesday submitted the Working Group on Agriculture Production report to Indian Prime Minister in New Delhi. It is to mention that Indian Prime Minster on April 8, 2010 constituted the Working Group on Agriculture Production under the chairmanship of the Haryana Chief Minister, Bhupinder Singh Hooda and the Chief Ministers of Punjab, Bihar and West Bengal as members to recommend strategies and action plan...