One of the key demands of the Right to Food Campaign for the National Food Security Act is to re-introduce nutritious millets to government food programmes like the public distribution system. Millets like bajra, jowar, kodo, kutki and ragi among hundreds of other varieties have sustained communities for close to 10,000 years in India.
Indian agriculture was mostly organic before the advent of the Green Revolution. However, the widespread adoption of nutrient-responsive and high-yielding varieties greatly promoted the use of inorganic fertilisers, weedicides and insecticides. The compulsion to grow more for food security has led farmers to overlook food quality norms and an indiscriminate use of natural resources.
This report prepared by the International Panel
for Sustainable Resource Management assesses best available science on
the environmental and resource impacts of production and consumption.
The assessment report identifies priorities amongst global consumption
activities, industrial sectors and materials from primary industries in
terms of their environmental impacts and
Nearly one sixth of the global population is malnourished. The problem is particularly acute in tropical Africa, where constant or recurrent food shortages affect over 30% of the population
Two of India's foremost agricultural scientists, whose names invariably come up whenever the phrase "green revolution" is uttered or written about - Dr. MS Swaminathan and Dr MV Rao-have not endorsed the application of Bt technology in brinjal so far Why?
The barriers created by stunted agricultural growth for industrial development have constituted a recurrent theme in debates on Indian economic policy. This essay brings out these debates in terms of the disproportionality caused by the disparate rates of industrial and agricultural growth.
The global crisis has exposed underlying structural imbalances built up over decades. Reorienting the macroeconomic structure in fairer, more balanced and inclusive channels of development will help sustain the recovery once fiscal stimulus policies have done their job.
The issue concerning genetically-modified crops is not that Bt brinjal was consigned to cold storage but the process that led to its approval being held in abeyance, says Arvind Panagariya
