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Japanese could face a future eating only rice and potatoes with no meat because of growing global food shortages and an alarmingly low rate of food self-sufficiency, a government report said Friday. About 60% of food consumed in Japan is imported from countries such as the United States, China, Australia and Canada. If the global food crisis intensifies and results in a lower availability of food imports, Japanese would see a dramatic shift in their diets, the Agriculture Ministry white paper warned.

Land reforms in Kerala, far from being a remarkable success, have been a major failure. They were meant to redistribute land and not to improve productivity. It is time the state government considered ordering that redistributed land should be returned if the beneficiaries do not cultivate it and also reversing the existing anti-tenancy law. Kerala's food security demands that the state think afresh about its policies for land and production.

How can countries cope in the short and medium term with the sharp rise in wheat prices? The global movements of the past suggest that in the case of wheat, prices are influenced by the stock and output policies of just a handful of countries. It would be dangerous for large countries like China and India to depend on the global market for their food security. And it is time world bodies consider establishing a global reserve to help food-deficit countries in times of crisis.

News from Burma keeps getting worse: dire poverty, murderous repression and now cyclone Nargis has killed some 100,000 people. Disease and starvation could push the toll over the million mark as the country's despots, unbelievably, impede emergency aid while exporting rice - literally making a killing on inflated international prices. Burma is suffering even more than it might because it neglected its farms.

Bangladesh calls for immediate global action to address three major global challenges - food crisis, increased oil price and climate change. Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the United Nations, Ismat Jahan, made this call while speaking on behalf of the least developed countries at the high level segment of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) in New York Wednesday. Ambassador Jahan said the price of food grains had surged to its record high, affecting the LDCs most disproportionately.

Biofarm empowers the farmers to use common resources found locally Safe and secure: Women have been trained in the manufacture of low cost bio-liquid formulations. For almost the last fifty years Indian agricultural practices have mainly concentrated on increasing yield, leading to the cultivation more mono crops (single crops). This in turn has made the crops highly vulnerable to pest attacks, soil becoming barren, and ground water toxic.

A handful of the world's largest agricultural biotechnology companies are seeking hundreds of patents on gene-altered crops designed to withstand drought and other environmental stresses, part of a race for dominance in the potentially lucrative market for crops that can handle global warming, according to a report being released Tuesday.

palaniappan Chidambaram, India's finance minister, is angry about the global food crisis. This senior member of the international

Lanka warns rice hoarders: In the face of soaring food prices, the Sri Lankan government has said it would come down heavily on rice hoarders and traders flouting a price control order on rice

in the first week of April, thousands of people stormed the presidential palace in Haiti, throwing stones and demanding the resignation of President Rene Preval over soaring food prices. In

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