-The Hindu The Bali ministerial conference in December presents a crucial opportunity to bring about changes in WTO rules Ending hunger and poverty requires major national policy initiatives in developing countries. The United Nations Secretary-General has articulated a broad zero hunger vision, endorsed and embraced as a priority by national leaders in many developing countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Production of food by small cultivators in developing countries has a...

-The Hindu India needs an early agreement, and also adequate atmospheric "space" in terms of allowed carbon emissions to pursue its development goals. It needs to take a proactive stance on this By all accounts, no dramatic developments are to be expected from the 19th edition of the Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that started in Warsaw last week. But it is generally...

-Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy Blog For those who see agroecological approaches as necessary for achieving the food, health, and environmental targets of post 2015 agenda, agroecology is not only central to maintaining ecosystem integrity, but also to realizing food sovereignty of those involved in food production and consumption. IATP's new report, Scaling up Agroecology: Toward the Realization of the Right to Food, begins from five principles of agroecology, presents examples...

-The Telegraph Kolkata: The Mamata Banerjee government should have calculated the costs of possible retaliation by other states before banning potato export from Bengal, agriculture experts have said. For now, no state has threatened a payback for the ban, clamped despite pleas from the chief ministers of Odisha and Assam after a shortage pushed up potato prices in Bengal. As the Bengal administration grapples with the problem, importers of essential foodstuff have sounded...

-The Business Standard Bt brinjal in Bangladesh calls for a policy review by India With Bangladesh approving commercial farming of Bt brinjal - a genetically modified (GM) crop developed using technology that evolved originally in India - the moratorium put on tests of a similar gene-altered version of this vegetable by New Delhi is likely to give rise to fresh complications. Given the highly porous border between the two countries, ingress of...