-The Business Standard   The food security ordinance would empower poor urban migrants to challenge denial of ration cards The new Food Security Ordinance provides virtually nothing and yet quite a lot. What it provides is food as a legal right. And that means a lot for a poor migrant in a city chawl, with no local address proof, having left all identity cards back in their native village and unable to claim anything...

-The United Nations Global cereal production is expected to increase by 7 per cent in 2013 compared to last year, the United Nations food agency said today, but warned that in spite of a boost in supply, various regions including Central Africa, West Africa and Syria are still affected by food insecurity. In its Crop Prospects and Food Situation report, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) forecasts that cereal production this year...

-The Economic Times The monsoon made a dream start this year. Bountiful rainfall in June has prepared the ground for bumper harvest and lower food inflation. But don't celebrate. Look beyond the immediate future and good monsoon this year may not really be good news. It has merely delayed an agricultural crisis, which our complacent policymakers perhaps need to jolt them into action. With food demand rising in step with the growing...

-Frontline Professor Sukhpal Singh, a faculty member of the Centre for Management of Agriculture at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, has been researching and documenting the process of contract farming and food supply chains in India for more than a decade. He is of the view that the small farmer is being excluded in the method currently in place, which defeats the very purpose of improving Indian agriculture. Sukhpal Singh,...

-The Hindu The hostility to the UPA's food security Bill from both its allies and the Opposition stems not from substantial objections to the draft law itself but from other political grouses The decision to bring an ordinance to provide food security to 67 per cent of the country's population was received with much hostility by the Opposition parties last week. The latter seemed surprised that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) could...