-The Hindu The huge deficit in blood availability outside urban centres must jolt the government into legalising unbanked blood supply Twenty-year-old Putul, living in a village 70 km from a district headquarters town in Chhattisgarh, had been in labour for two days and a night. It was her first pregnancy. In order to hasten labour, the local quack administered several injections that increased her uterine contractions. Forty hours after the onset of...

-The Hindu That one-third of the food produced annually for human consumption is wasted is in itself unconscionable in a world where 870 million, or one in eight people, go hungry every day. A United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation report now says that this high volume of wastage that occurs right through the food supply chain exerts an adverse impact on land, water, biodiversity and climate change. This impact...

-PTI MUMBAI: The demand for foodgrain warehousing is expected to grow by 5-6 per cent annually in the next five years, according to a report by Rabobank. The growth will be driven by a range of factors, including the government focus on food security, current storage space shortage and the recently announced National Food Security Bill, Rabobank analyst Vaishali Chopra said. "The country must see improvements to its existing storage system as well...

-The Economic Times KOLKATA: Soon Bihar will become Punjab and second green revolution will start from these areas, said Dr Ashok Gulati, chairman, Commission for Agriculture Cost & Price at the 3rd Crop Summit held in Bihar. Dr Gulati raised the issue of unavailability of proper support value to farmers. He further told that Bihar doesn't have any issue in production but procurement is the major issue. Its rice milling capacity is...

-FAO Direct economic costs of $750 billion annually - Better policies required, and "success stories" need to be scaled up and replicated Rome: The waste of a staggering 1.3 billion tonnes of food per year is not only causing major economic losses but also wreaking significant harm on the natural resources that humanity relies upon to feed itself, says a new FAO report. Food Wastage Footprint: Impacts on Natural Resources is the first...