Full Coverage: Agriculture

22.11.2007 Paying farmers for environmental services in developing countries can go a long way in mitigating effects of climate change, while also benefiting the billion plus poor who depend on farming for livelihood, claims a recent report by the Food and Agricultural Organization.

19.11.2007 There is nothing official about it. Yet, the ban on grazing imposed by local farmers in some villages of Ahmednagar in the Indian state of Maharashtra has led to remarkable results.

12.11.2007 Food and Agricultural Organization’s latest prediction of high global prices of cereals in the coming year has led to debates on future prices of agricultural commodities in both rich and poor trading countries. With growing demand for food, feed and industrial use – many countries will pay more for importing cereals than they did before, even though they are expected to import less, the report says.

12.11.2007 Of the hundred and fifty thousand suicides by farmers in India in the last decade, nearly two-thirds have occurred in the region where they have been engaged in growing cash crops. This region today has acquired a dubious distinction of ‘Special Elimination Zone’ or suicide SEZ. The Special Economic Zones are lands earmarked for industrial growth with massive subsidies granted to capitalists.

07.11.2007 Susan Smith of the National Confectioners Association responds to OneWorld's article on fair trade chocolate for Halloween.

07.11.2007 UNITED NATIONS, Nov 6 (IPS) - A long-held basic human right, the right to adequate food for the world's 854 million hungry people, is being threatened once again -- this time by the conversion of wheat, sugar, palm oil and maize into agricultural fuel.

06.11.2007 Crop failures, rising debts and state apathy are making farmers take their own lives in the ‘prosperous’ Indian state of Gujarat. Debt-ridden families are now calling upon the government to compensate their losses.

06.11.2007 South Asian countries rely heavily on rainwater for irrigation. But with the employment of ‘zero tillage’ technique, the irrigation demand for rice and wheat farming has substantially come down.

06.11.2007 A proposal to grow opium poppy for medical use by the Afghan Senlis Council and the European Parliament has led to outrage among narcotics experts and officials working to end the opium trade. Legalizing poppy production, they fear, will lead to further insecurity among people.

02.11.2007 In the Indian state of Punjab, the natural farmers’ movement, Kheti Virasat Mission, is trying to rejuvenate land that has lost its fertility due to decades of chemical intensive farming.