“THE world’s attention is back on your cause.” That was Bill Gates talking to agricultural scientists gathered recently to honour the late Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution. The tycoon-turned-philanthropist was right. This week, the world—in the guise of 60-odd heads of state including the pope—held the first United Nations food summit since 2002. As the world’s attention turns from the receding financial crisis, it is switching to one...
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Food and agriculture: How to feed the world
IN 1974 Henry Kissinger, then America’s secretary of state, told the first world food conference in Rome that no child would go to bed hungry within ten years. Just over 35 years later, in the week of another United Nations food summit in Rome, 1 billion people will go to bed hungry. This failure, already dreadful, may soon get worse. None of the underlying agricultural problems which produced a spike in...
More »Right to Food: Too Little Too Late?
Is drought being used as an excuse to delay the national Food Security Act? An informal network of organizations and individuals involved in the Right to Food Campaign believe so. The campaign groups are demanding that a national consultative process on an improved draft bill must be started immediately so that the proposed Food Security Act could be passed as soon as possible. The campaigners also demand that exports of...
More »Food dilemma: High prices or shortages
For a man who will inherit vast tracts of fertile farmland in Punjab, India's grain bowl, Jaswinder Singh made what seemed to him a logical career move -- he took a job with a telecoms company in New Delhi. "I can't go back to the village after an M.B.A. Delhi has more money, better quality of life. The job is more satisfying, and you don't depend on the weather or...
More »Floods expose anomalies in the proposed Food security Act
The ongoing floods in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharasthra have pushed millions of rural folks below the poverty line. The tragedy which is far from over has exposed the anomalies in the system of categorization of BPL families as proposed in the concept note of the Food Security Act. More than 200 people have died and over 2.5 million rendered homeless in AP and Karnataka alone. Almost all farmers in...
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