Dr BK Mukhopadhyay

We are into a period of global food shortage and rise in food prices which were not anticipated even a few years ago. A steeply rising food import bill in the medium term could well be on the cards. This is likely to put a severe strain on the Indian government's efforts to reduce poverty and more equitably distribute the economic gains of the last four years. But this challenge can be turned into an opportunity and gives the country's policy makers a chance to address and partially solve the related problems of low agricultural growth and stubborn poverty in rural areas. The challenge and opportunity are both contained in a comparison with China. Though India has 1.47 times more arable land than China, the latter uses its land much better. Its cereal yield is 2.18 times India's. If Indian farm productivity and incomes can be dramatically raised, both global poverty and food shortage will be partially mitigated. To meet the challenge, absolutely the first task is to improve water management

Japan Tobacco Inc will increase its own production of frozen foods while cutting back on outsourcing to China, President Hiroshi Kimura said Tuesday. JT will also expand the scope of its food safety inspections, which focus primarily on the manufacturing process at present, to new supervising procedures including the entire process from material processing to warehouse distribution operations, according to the announcement made by Kimura in the wake of food poisoning cases involving dumplings made in China. Among other actions, the company will increase the frequency of inspections from one or two times per year at present, in addition to inspections conducted without advance notice. JT will also require all suppliers to secure ISO 22000 certificates for food safety management systems from the International Organization for Standardization within the next two years and will require the certification as a prerequisite for production of food products on behalf of JT.

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Just over a decade after scientists cloned the first animal, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has declared that meat and milk from cloned farm animals are safe to eat. The announcement

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