Members of La Via Campesina and other groups condemn market-based solutionsHector Rodriguez, who runs an alternative radio station in Cancun called Reptil, decided on a novel way to protest the commercialisation of forestry.As hundreds of people marched to the venue of the United Nations Climate Change Conference on Tuesday, Mr. Rodriguez walked up to the posse of Mexican policemen with riot shields and launched into an impassioned plea to help...

“Resource crunch often makes people depressed, especially for small farmers like us who are used to it for decades. We often live in severe cash-strapped situations and learn to adjust or adapt; sometimes we just succumb to it,” says farmer Mr.Vikas Shinde from Jalgoan, Maharashtra, who developed a motor cycle operated water pump to irrigate his fields.“The government just does not seem interested in encouraging farmers,” he says.“The National Rural...

Some 350 million people living in rural areas being lifted out of extreme poverty in the past decade, according to The Rural Poverty Report, published by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a United Nations (UN) agency. However, in spite of this, more than a billion people around the world still continue to suffer. The UN describes extreme poverty as living on less than $1.25 (80p) a day. But factors such as...

The papers in this volume, as indicated in the preface, are not envisaged to be mere academic exercises; they are intended to provide the basis for informed discussions among key stakeholders and with policymakers involved in the areas related to agriculture, food security and rural development in India. If achieving self-sufficiency in food is the primary goal of agriculture policy, poverty alleviation is the second. As has been pointed out,...

In what is being called the mother of all scams, food grain meant for the poorest of the poor has been smuggled out of Uttar Pradesh into the open market and even to a neighbouring country. Starting from 2002, under the reign of different chief ministers, the scam is estimated at over Rs 2 lakh crore, Times Now reported. The scam leaves all political parties that have ruled Uttar Pradesh...