-The Hindustan Times The environment ministry has allowed field trials of two varieties of genetically modified (GM) brinjal and mustard, almost 18 months after the previous government ordered a freeze on such tests. In a reply to an RTI query early October, the ministry said on August 21, it permitted the Delhi University to hold trials for a mustard variety and Maharashtra-based Bejo Seeds Pvt Ltd to test Bt brinjal. The decision does...

-The Hindu Ignoring hunger and malnutrition will have significant costs to any country's development. Nutrition improvement has both intrinsic and instrumental value One of the disappointments in the post-reform period in India has been the slow progress in the reduction of malnutrition, especially with reference to the underweight among children. In fact, the rate of change in the percentage of underweight children has been negligible in the period 1998-99 to 2005-06; the...

-United Nations The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) today kicked-off a two-day meeting focusing on civil society's role in giving a voice to the hungry and how best to improve a multi-stakeholder approach to food security and nutrition policy development at national, regional and global levels. "Reaching consensus is important because it will make us move faster and because we need results in the short term," said Graziano da Silva,...

-The Indian Express While the new government has spoken about taking policy measures to address the needs of India's young population, nearly 10 crore of the elderly - citizens above 60 years of age - are generally neglected in policymaking. The latest Census data report that 15 per cent of the elderly live alone, mainly because of the nuclearisation of the family. As longevity is increasing and women tend to live...

-Down to Earth Asia houses 526 million of the 805 million chronically undernourished people in the world The good news is that the world today is producing enough to support the projected population of nine billion people by 2050. But the bad news is that still 805 million people-or one in every nine people-are hungry in the world, says a new report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund...