Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal has sought direct and immediate intervention of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to offer relaxations in the specifications of paddy for its procurement by the Food Corporation of India and state agencies. The CM said a failure to take immediate corrective and remedial action could lead to serious law and order problem in the days to come. Badal has also written to Union Agriculture Minister Sharad...

One billion people worldwide still live in extreme poverty Agricultural growth remains central to poverty reduction, as one billion people worldwide continue living in extreme poverty, many of them in rural areas, a World Bank Group on agriculture, the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), said in a report released on Tuesday. Drawing on the World Bank Group's (WBG) experience in supporting agricultural growth in the past decade, the report — Growth and Productivity...

Protecting the rights of land users from speculation, stepped up production of agrofuels and population growth is vital to combat global hunger and malnutrition, an independent United Nations expert said today. “Pressures on land are increasing as a result of speculation on farmland, the expansion of agrofuels production, and demographic growth in rural areas,” Special Rapporteur on the right to food Olivier De Schutter noted. “In this context, moving swiftly towards protecting...

Ten thousand empty plates were displayed at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower in Paris on Saturday morning in an event to mark World Food Day. French non-governmental organisation Action Contre la Faim (Action Against Hunger) organised the event, dubbed the Banquet Against Hunger, in coordination with the European Union, to draw the public's attention to starvation and hunger worldwide. According to Francois Danel, General Director of Action Contre la Faim, "ten-thousand...

The Commonwealth Games were no showcase, but a mirror of India 2010. If they presented anything, it was this — Indian crony, casino capitalism at its most vigorous. The Commonwealth Games over, we can now return to those of everyday Indian life. For all the protests, though, there was nothing in the corruption that marked the Games that does not permeate every town and city, all the time. Just that, in...