Food inflation moved up to 11.49 per cent for the week ended February 12 as compared with 11.05 per cent for the previous week even as prices of certain items fell marginally. Despite the increase, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said while inflation has been a concern for the last 18 months, it will come down to 7 per cent by the end of the current fiscal. According to the Wholesale...

The 50-year-old farmer knew from experience that his onion crop was doomed when torrential rains pounded his fields throughout September, a month when the Indian monsoon normally peters out. For lack of modern agricultural systems in this part of rural India, his land does not have adequate drainage trenches, and he has no safe, dry place to store onions. The farmer, Arun Namder Talele, said he lost 70 percent of...

These days, Jhum cultivation also known as ‘slash and burn method of cultivation’, ‘shifting cultivation’ etc has been under continuous scanner for its productivity and ecological viability. This form of cultivation is followed widely in almost all the North Eastern States including the hill areas of Manipur. There are those who consider jhum cultivation as unproductive and ecologically disastrous so that people (understood as tribal people of the hill areas)...

Export curbs during 2008 crisis ‘exacerbated' situation. The Food and Agriculture Organisation on Wednesday said short-term policy actions, especially curbs on exports, could have harmful effects in the longer term and even aggravate the situation. In statement put on its website, the organisation, a body of the United Nations, pointed out at the 2007-08 crisis in the global food market as an example of how such decision can exacerbate the situation...

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is calling on countries to carefully examine the implications of high food prices and not to take any policy actions that might appear useful in the short term but could have harmful, longer-term effects or even aggravate the situation. The call comes with the agency’s publication today of an updated guide for policy-makers in developing countries, aimed at helping them address the negative...