-The Hindu Ignoring hunger and malnutrition will have significant costs to any country's development. Nutrition improvement has both intrinsic and instrumental value One of the disappointments in the post-reform period in India has been the slow progress in the reduction of malnutrition, especially with reference to the underweight among children. In fact, the rate of change in the percentage of underweight children has been negligible in the period 1998-99 to 2005-06; the...

-The Hindu The world cannot afford to talk about hunger without addressing climate change, food production without sustainability or growth without good nutrition With the world's population predicted to reach 9 billion by 2050, we collectively face a dual challenge: ensuring that everyone will have access to affordable, nutritious food without decimating the earth's natural resources in the process. This is easier said than done. Our current food system is dysfunctional both...

-The Hindu     Aberrations in monsoon behaviour are not uncommon. What is new is the difficulty in forecasting caused by factors coming under the generic title, ‘Climate change.' Forecasts by the South Asian Climate Outlook Forum and the India Meteorological Department indicate that the south-west monsoon rainfall may be deficient. Also, there is a possibility of the evolution of an El Niño event during June to September. There is a 45 per cent...

-FAO Per capita vegetable production in Asia and the Pacific has increased some 25 percent over the last decade. Yet, while Asian countries produce more than three-quarters of the world's vegetables, they and other producers worldwide will need to dramatically increase their vegetable production by 47 percent to meet the nutritional needs of a growing population which would exceed nine billion by 2050, FAO warned today. According to a UN report, with...

-The Hindu Adoption of high production technology and cultivation of high yielding varieties have put tremendous pressure on soil nutrient reserve in the country leading to a great imbalance in nutrient status in the soil. A large chunk of soil in the country has been rendered deficient in micronutrients, which is one of the major reasons that crops have stopped responding to fertilizers, according to Dr. M Anandaraj, Director of Indian Institute...