Dilip Kumar Jha / Mumbai October 16, 2008, 0:42 IST

The country

Bangladesh, which is among the countries with the most worrisome hunger status, has been ranked 70th among 88 nations in the Global Hunger Index.
The country suffers from an alarming level of hunger while Burundi, Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Liberia, Niger and Sierra Leone

Over the last two years there has been a rapid rise in the world prices of almost all basic foods like rice, wheat, maize, soyabeans, edible oils etc. leading to high incidence of hunger and malnutrition around the world. This is a serious threat to the global economy, where millions of people are excluded from consuming food, simply because they do not have the purchasing power to buy it.

Gargi Parsai

NEW DELHI: The State of Food and Agriculture Report, 2008 of the Food and Agriculture Organisation has called for an urgent review of the biofuel policies and subsidies to preserve the goal of world food security, protect poor farmers, promote broad-based rural development and ensure environmental sustainability.

Biofuels are doing more harm than good, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation said yesterday, in its strongest call yet to review "current policies supporting, subsidising and mandating biofuel production and use".

ROME: A UN agency called on Tuesday for an urgent review of agriculture and biofuel subsidies and trade barriers, saying their removal would increase opportunities for developing countries to take advantage of rising biofuel demand.

Now, 925M Are Impoverished

New York:A top UN agency has revealed that rising food prices have pushed 75 million more people into the ranks of the world

GOING ORGANIC: Basudeb Banerjee (right), Chairman, Tea Board of India, shaking hands with Kaison Chang, Secretary, FAO IGG on Tea, at a press conference in Kolkata on Friday. Anne Boor (left), Project Director, INFOAM, and Nianjun Schen, Assistant Project Manager-Common Fund for Commodities, look on.

DRAVI KANTHG Geneva, 18 September

As the world's absolute hunger threshold (or absolute poverty of less than $1.25 a day) rose to 923 million last year due to rising food prices, India accounted for a lion's share of over 231 million, according to the latest figures released by the United Nations food and agriculture agency yesterday.