The Supreme Court’s observations on the public distribution system (PDS) which call for exclusion of people living above poverty line (APL); fixing monthly ration on per head rather than per household basis; and using unique identification (UID) cards for targeting PDS supplies have implications that go beyond the PDS. The court has virtually set new parameters even for the proposed food security law since that is also likely to be...

JHABUA, India — Inside the drab district hospital, where dogs patter down the corridors, sniffing for food, Ratan Bhuria’s children are curled together in the malnutrition ward, hovering at the edge of starvation. His daughter, Nani, is 4 and weighs 20 pounds. His son, Jogdiya, is 2 and weighs only eight. Landless and illiterate, drowned by debt, Mr. Bhuria and his ailing children have staggered into the hospital ward after falling...

Wheat Prices surged to a two-year high while shares in European brewers and food producers fell on Friday as markets reacted to the sudden imposition of a ban on grain exports from drought-hit Russia. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin moved decisively on Thursday to halt exports of grain and flour from August 15 to the end of the year and the country’s railroad monopoly said on Friday it will stop loading...

Russia has announced a temporary ban on wheat exports. This is of course not entirely unanticipated. Today, soon after the Russian Prime Minister reportedly announced a temporary grain export ban, prices were seen rising further. Drought conditions have threatened Russian wheat harvest. From record 63.7 million tonnes in 2008-09, wheat production declined by two million tonnes the following year. Drought is now threatening to pull output down to around 50 mt. Russia's wheat exports...

The legacy of Industrial Agriculture With the world population passing the 6 billion mark last October, the debate over our ability to sustain a fast growing population is heating up. Biotechnology advocates in particular are becoming very vocal in their claim that there is no alternative to using genetically modified crops in agriculture if "we want to feed the world". Actually, that quote might be true. It depends what they mean...