-The Guardian Land rights not just issue for developing world as report shows public subsidies help a few firms 'grab' vast tracts of EU land Vast tracts of land in Europe are being "grabbed" by large companies, speculators, wealthy foreign buyers and pension funds in a similar way to in developing countries, according to a major new report. Chinese corporations, Middle Eastern sovereign wealth and hedge funds, as well as Russian oligarchs and...

-Outlook Development activities including thermal power projects, mining and other polluting industries should not be allowed in a 60,000 sq km ecologically sensitive "natural landscape" of Western Ghats, a mountainous range that passes through six states, a Government panel said today. In its report, the 10-member high-level working group, headed by eminent scientist K Kasturirangan, has not recommended any regulatory mechanism for the remaining 96,000 sq km area of the Western...

-The Hindu Despite agriculture and allied activities accounting for only 14.1 per cent of the GDP in 2011-12, the Economic Survey recognises the sector’s role in the country’s economy as ‘much bigger’ with its share in total employment being as high as 58.2 per cent. Fast agriculture growth and reforms in the sector remain vital for jobs, income and food security, the Survey notes, while reinforcing the need for setting the growth...

-The Guardian In a village in India's poorest state, Bihar, farmers are growing world record amounts of rice – with no GM, and no herbicide. Is this one solution to world food shortages? Sumant Kumar was overjoyed when he harvested his rice last year. There had been good rains in his village of Darveshpura in north-east India and he knew he could improve on the four or five tonnes per hectare that he usually...

-IPS News Officials at the World Bank are forcefully rejecting a new internal evaluation that is highly critical of the institution’s decade-long forest policy, expressing their “strong disagreement” with some assertions in the report. The assessment, written by the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), the World Bank Group’s auditor, warns that expectations for poverty reduction as envisioned in the bank’s 2002 Forest Strategy “have not yet been met”. The report is particularly critical...