Ahead of a global summit on the food crisis, the United Nations called on world leaders on Wednesday to agree to urgent measures to ease demand for grains and ease high food prices. A report by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations suggested that countries might need to reconsider policies that encourage the production of ethanol and other biofuels. The report also suggested that the food summit in Rome, which will run from June 3 to 5, will give world leaders a chance to renew a war on hunger.,

By 7 a.m., the bakers of Sang Tarashi Street have been hard at work for hours, shaping globs of dough, slapping them into a hot clay oven and flipping them out at just the right second. A stack of naan sits invitingly by the window, and the familiar morning smell wafts into the street.

The two-day seminar on

Remarks Come In The Wake Of US Prez Blaming India For Global Food Crisis One way to beat the worldwide grain shortage is for meateaters to turn vegetarian, and the movement should start with US president George Bush, the Indian affiliate of animal rights organization Peta has said. Jumping headlong into the controversy that began with Bush's misconstrued remarks about India's role in the rise of food prices worldwide, Peta India has written a letter to the US president, urging him to become a vegetarian and asking other compassionate Americans to follow his example.

FOOTBALL-SIZED tomotoes, carrot-sized chillies and pumpkins that look like huge round rocks are what Chinese are growing to make a

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.

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An interactive session of scientists, farmers, State Agriculture departments and private organisations was held at the ICAR Research Complex for NE Region at Umiam in Meghalaya today to discuss about methods to improve the agricultural scenario in the North East.

The Fifties and Sixties were replete with news of food shortages in India. Following the Green Revolution, India became self-sufficient and the memories of shortages became history. The ongoing global food crisis is altogether a new development. The energy crisis, on the other hand, is not new and has remained a global issue since the Seventies. The commodity crisis is more a cyclical phenomenon and hence not entirely unfamiliar, while the banking crisis is self-inflicted. The man-made food crises in Africa are different and have been frequent, leading to misery and starvation deaths.

"The United States consumes more cereals including wheat, rice and maize than India.' In answer to a question during his press conference on inflation, Convener of the Congress party's National Media Committee Kapil Sibal quoted the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) to say that while the projected growth in the consumption pattern of cereals in India was 2.17 per cent between 2006-07 and 2007-08, it was 11.81 per cent for the United States during the same period. The average percentage increase globally was only 2.06 per cent.