The National Advisory Council, headed by Congress President Sonia Gandhi, on Saturday settled for a much less ambitious National Food Security Act than it had previously agreed to. Scaling down its recommendations, it decided to recommend subsidised foodgrains for 46% of the rural Indian population and 28% of the urban population. The pruning of the recommendation had an immediate fallout, with the NAC member Jean Dreaze, face of the right-to-food security campaign,...

rice exporters from India are upbeat over the higher projections of basmati output and better prospects of exports. The loss of crop, in Philippines due to storms and in Thailand and Pakistan due to floods, is driving Indian exporters to speculate for better realisations this year. The satellite image procured by All India rice Millers Association and Agriculture and Processed Food Products Exports Development Authority (APEDA) depict an increase in area under...

Barely a week after food and civil supplies minister Nazrul Islam admitted to leakages in the public distribution system (PDS) in Assam, food grains subsidised for the poor are popping up in eateries. Since Monday night, police in eastern Assam raided a couple of dhabas or roadside eateries and seized 250 quintals of rice, 28 quintals of wheat and six quintals of sugar. These commodities earmarked for fair price shops under...

Asia Pacific nations agreed on Sunday to boost the region’s agricultural productivity through technology transfer and information sharing as climate change and a fall in arable land threaten future food supplies. The 21-member countries of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) also called for “responsible” agricultural investment as rising acquisition of farmland in developing countries by other nations to ensure their own food supplies is causing friction with local people. “Climate change...

The three partners of the Left alliance will agitate for implementation of the recommendations of the D Bandopadyaya Commission on land reforms. Releasing the manifesto of the CPM here on Wednesday, its state secretary, Vijaykant Thakur, said that the Left alliance would also ask the government to bring in drastic land reforms on the pattern on Tripura, West Bengal and Kerala. He claimed, "In our manifesto, the Left parties have given alternative...