Soaring food prices and global grain shortages are bringing new pressures on governments, food companies and consumers to relax their longstanding resistance to genetically engineered crops. In Japan and South Korea, some manufacturers for the first time have begun buying genetically engineered corn for use in soft drinks, snacks and other foods. Until now, to avoid consumer backlash, the companies have paid extra to buy conventionally grown corn. But with prices having tripled in two years, it has become too expensive to be so finicky.

Amid a situation of high food prices posing new challenges for poor net food-importing countries, biofuel crops displacing food crops out of cultivation and the stalemate in the WTO negotiation, the director of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), Bob Watson, has some sane words

The time has come for the north Indian tea industry to focus its attention on the production of more of quality tea than before, according to Mr C.S. Bedi, Chairman of Tea Research Association (TRA). "While the yield has always been a factor in profitability, quality consciousness is need of the hour,' Mr Bedi observed while talking to Business Line here on Friday.

Global food shortages have taken everyone by surprise. What is to be done? Reuters SAMAKE BAKARY sells rice from wooden basins at Abobote market in the northern suburbs of Abidjan in C

on april 23, the Delhi High Court will hear a case that is being dubbed as a "conflict between commercial interests and public health'. There are two main players

will genetically modified plants give the farmer better profits? Results from a study published in the January-February 2008 issue of Agronomy Journal say no. The study shows that Bt cotton