The dun wheat field spreading out at Ravi P. Singh's feet offered a possible clue to human destiny. Baked by a desert sun and deliberately starved of water, the plants were parched and nearly dead. Dr. Singh, a wheat breeder, grabbed seed heads that should have been plump with the staff of life. His practiced fingers found empty husks. “You're not going to feed the people with that,” he said. But then, over...

-The Hindu   Investing an additional $40 billion annually in the forestry sector can halve the deforestation rates by 2030, increase the rate of tree planting by about 140 per cent by 2050, and catalyse the creation of millions of new jobs, according to a report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Backed by the right kind of enabling policies, such an investment — equal to about two-thirds more than what...

-BBC   The prices of staple foods will more than double in 20 years unless world leaders take action to reform the global food system, Oxfam has warned. By 2030, the average cost of key crops will increase by between 120% and 180%, the charity forecasts. Half of that increase will be caused by Climate Change, Oxfam predicts, in its report Growing a Better Future. It calls on world leaders to improve regulation of...

A balance sheet of the Fourth U.N. Conference on Least Developed Countries held in Istanbul. Since the international community recognised the special category of Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in 1971 and started extending special benefits to them, their number has increased from 25 in 1971 to 48 in 2011. In 40 years, only Botswana, Cape Verde and Maldives have moved up. Meanwhile, 26 countries were added. Clearly, the development strategy for...

The steadily rising rate of economic growth in India has recently been around 8 percent per year (it is expected to be 9 percent this year), and there is much speculation about whether and when India may catch up with and surpass China’s over 10 percent growth rate. Despite the evident excitement that this subject seems to cause in India and abroad, it is surely rather silly to be obsessed...