-The ASIan Age In India and around the world, poverty is predominantly rural. Development agencies often note that 75 per cent of the world's extremely poor people - those who earn less than $1.25 a day - live in rural areas. New figures from the 2014 Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which measures overlapping dimensions of deprivation, show that rural poverty rates are even higher in some regions. In South ASIa, the...

-PTI Coimbatore: Bringing small millets into mainstream diet is the challenge ahead and stakeholders meeting can be held once in three months to ensure its increased production and consumption, an officials of DHAN Foundation, said today. Focusing on consumption, cultivation, conservation and commerzialisation of small millets was crucial for having an intergrated approach in promoting them, M P VASImalai, Executive Director of the foundation, said while addressing a National Consultative Workshop on...

-Deccan Chronicle Chennai: "With an estimated 8 billion mouths to feed by 2025, achieving zero hunger by that deadline is indeed challenging and this calls for arriving at precise solutions, particularly in ensuring access to nutritious food, not calories alone," said Dr M.S. Swaminathan, founder chairman of the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), Chennai. "Family farming offers an effective and economic solution to help meet the challenge of making sure that...

-The Times of India PATNA: Bihar's agriculture sector is highly feminized, with 50.1% of the total workforce engaged in farming activities being women, says a report on women in the informal economy of Bihar, which was released on Friday at ASIan Development Research Institute (ADRI) here. The report has been compiled by SEWA Bharat's Special Task Force. The high rate of migration of men from Bihar over the past few decades has...

-Down to Earth Last year, when commerce minister of UPA government had agreed to the trade facilitation pact pushed by developed countries, it was perceived as compromising the interests of poor nations that need to stockpile foodgrains for public food programmes After weeks of speculation on whether India would sign on the dotted line, the new World Trade Organisation agreement to ease worldwide customs rules collapsed late Thursday night in Geneva. Many (including...