Full Coverage: Agriculture

27.04.2006 from Carmelo Ruiz's bilingual blog:
"It is not enough to think of technological solution or substitute one source of energy for another, but instead we need to think of new sustainable decentralized and just societies," concludes Carmelo Ruiz (scroll down the page for this article).

25.04.2006 Indian NGO Navdanya has said that the package announced by the Indian government to prevent farmers's suicides - that seeks to increase the flow of credit into rural areas - will only lead to more frustration and suicides among farmers. Navdanya's assumption is based on the fact that capital intensive agriculture is pushing farmers into debt and suicides.

24.04.2006 Crossing the River Nile to enter northern Uganda is more than just a visible example of the immense power of the world's longest river but is also a testimony to the divide between two versions of the same country – a war-ravaged north and a much more prosperous south.

20.04.2006 The major thrust of the Indian government's long-term economic package is to arrest farmers' suicides through farm credit, crop, farmer and cattle insurance, improving irrigation facilities and production in the four southern states that have witnessed the highest number of suicides.

17.04.2006 Indian human rights activist Medha Patkar ended her 20-day old fast on Monday after the Supreme Court of India said that it will stop the construction of a dam on the Narmada river if the government does not rehabilitate displaced people. Rahul Kumar reports from the agitation site.

17.04.2006 from Science Blog:
Why cutting out meat is healthier for people and for the planet.

17.04.2006 Though 'feminisation' of agriculture is taking place in rural India with more women taking to farming, cultural attitudes towards women remain intact. As more and more men migrating to cities for work, it is believed that up to 50 per cent of the land is being farmed by women.

17.04.2006 Nine poultry farmers have committed suicide across India because of the bird flu scare. It is believed that nearly 70 per cent poultry farmers in India are in dire straits as demand for chicken and related products has gone down considerably.

13.04.2006 A new report from GRAIN looks at the power politics behind the bird flu, the global response to it and its consequences for the poor. The GRAIN report finds that the agencies of the UN at the forefront of the international response to the virus, both WHO and FAO, are pursuing top-down strategies for wiping out bird flu that in turn are wiping out the foundations for long term, pro-poor solutions in the process.

10.04.2006 from Climate Change Action blog:
Touted by some as an energy panacaea, biofuels raise as many problems as they solve. What matters is the energy and greenhouse gas balance. Almuth Ernsting's blog shows it's not just about carbon.

10.04.2006 India’s encounter with avian influenza seems far from over. Navapur in Maharashtra, where the avian influenza first broke out in January this year, had barely started breathing a sigh of relief at the containment of the deadly virus when a veterinary laboratory in Bhopal announced the presence of the pathogen in samples collected in Jalgoan district, 140 km away.

04.04.2006 South Asian Network for Social and Agricultural Development (SANSAD) is organising a South Asian Seminar on Globalisation and Food Sovereignty on Wednesday, the 26th of April 2006 from 09:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. at the Lecture Hall, India International Centre Annexe, 40, Max Mueller Marg, New Delhi – 110 003.

04.04.2006 While GDP growth in India is touching new highs, the divergence in sectoral growth rates only increases. Industry and, particularly, services record creditable or remarkable rates of growth, but the agricultural sector performs poorly. In this edition of Macroscan, C. P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh discuss some implications of this disproportionality.

04.04.2006 WASHINGTON, D.C., Apr 3 (OneWorld) - Florida tomato pickers converged on McDonald's Corp.'s flagship Chicago restaurant over the weekend to protest poor working conditions and wages they say have stagnated for 30 years.

03.04.2006 The indefinite fast by activists of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), including Medha Patkar, has continued for the fifth day. People from the western and central Indian states of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh have been on a protest in New Delhi over lack of resettlement of nearly 35,000 families. The NBA wants the union government to intervene in what is calls cases of corruption and violation of Supreme Court orders.