Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon intends to join a 24-hour fast over the weekend on the eve of the World Summit on Food Security in solidarity with the planet’s one billion people who do not have enough to eat, his spokesperson said today. Mr. Ban will deliver a speech at the opening of the three-day summit in Rome on Monday in which he is expected to say that it is unacceptable that...

A seminar titled Food Security and Sustainability in India, organized at Amritsar between 7 and 8 November by the GAD Institute of Development Studies, a NGO, at Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, brought together government officials, scientists, academicians and NGOs so as to generate discussions and debates surrounding climate change and global warming and their impact on agriculture. The Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change is going to take place between...

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (fao) today called for a day-long, global hunger strike in solidarity with the planet’s one billion people who do not have enough to eat, ahead of next week’s World Summit on Food Security. “I shall personally begin a 24-hour fast on Saturday morning,” fao Director-General Jacques Diouf told a press conference in Rome. “We are suggesting that everyone in the world who wants...

The plight of the hungry in developing countries is needlessly aggravated by farmers losing up to half of their crops after gathering the harvest, the United Nations agricultural agency said today, stressing that adequate investment and training could drastically cut the losses. The Food and Agricultural Organization (fao) said that excessive rainfall, droughts, extreme temperatures, contamination by micro-organisms, and premature harvesting are among the causes of these post-harvest losses, which...

The United Nations on 23 October, 2009 took a step towards helping the billion people around the world suffering from hunger achieve access to adequate food with the publication of a ‘how-to’ guide providing the tools for governments, institutions and civil society to assert this basic human right. The Food and Agricultural Organization (fao) has released a comprehensive six-volume set of guidelines, which it calls a “toolbox,” containing hands-on advice...