Over 25 million more children will suffer from malnourishment by 2050 due to effects of climate change and India will be one of the worst affected in the Asian region, a report by the International Food Policy Research Institute said on Wednesday. However, the study finds that the scenario of lower yields, higher prices, and increased child malnutrition can be averted with $7 billion additional annual investments in rural development...

India has suffered its worst drought since 1972, the official weather office said on Wednesday, with rains 23% below average at the end of the country's four-month monsoon season. "India's 2009 monsoon rainfall has been the worst since 1972," said a spokesperson for the Meteorological Department, P K Bandhopadhyay. In 1972, monsoon rainfall was 24 percent below average, he said, while other bad years such as 2002, 1987 and 1979...

Dr M.S. Swaminathan, considered the Father of the Green Revolution in India, finally stated his views on genetically-modified (GM) crops in an opinion piece published on August 26, 2009, in this newspaper. GM crops are produced by inserting foreign genes, mostly non-plant genes (bacterial, viral and animal genes) for obtaining hitherto non-existent, new characteristics in a crop. For instance, the Bt class of GM crops like Bt cotton and Bt...

VILLUPURAM: Collector R. Palanisamy has urged farmers to adopt the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) to improve yield and earnings. He was speaking at a special mass contact programme held in Chinnababusamudhram near here on Thursday. Mr. Palanisamy said the system required less water, manpower and seeds, but the yield would be one-and-half times that of traditional farming practices. He said mass contact programme was now being held on a rotation...

The spectre of inflation has returned to haunt India. It is not even six months since the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government returned to power but its inability to control food prices is arguably its single biggest failure till now. The inflation rate will eventually come down sometime in the (hopefully) not-too-distant future and the government will surely take credit for bringing prices down as and when that happens. But...