New Delhi India has potential to make forest produce like wood and paper as major foreign exchange earner and UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) is ready to extend knowledge and technological assistance for the same, a top FAO official said on Thursday.

“India can turn wood and paper as its major export items by pursuing a sustainable forestry policy,” Eduardo Rojas Sriales, assistant director general, forestry department, FAO,

The 6th South Asia Constituency Meeting of Global Environmental Facility (GEF) was conducted in Maldives. The meeting was inaugurated by Dr. Mohamed Ali, Chief of staff of president’s office in a ceremony held in Nasandhura Palace Hotel on 15 May 2012.. Abdullahi Majeed, Deputy Minister for Housing and Environment welcomed the participants to the meeting and wished them a pleasant stay in Maldives. Speaking at the inaugural ceremony Dr.

Speaking about the need to increase food production to feed the growing population, India’s representative from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Dr Peter Kenmore, on Monday said that this has to be done in a sustainable manner and by crop intensification.

He was delivering the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development’s (Nabard) 30th anniversary lecture on “Future of Global Agriculture: Challenges and Opportunities for India”.

For the first time ever, the number of poor people is declining everywhere. The past four years have seen the worst economic crisis since the 1930s and the biggest food-price increases since the 1970s. That must surely have swollen the ranks of the poor. Wrong. The best estimates for global poverty come from the World Bank’s Development Research Group, which has just updated from 2005 its figures for those living in absolute poverty (not be confused with the relative measure commonly used in rich countries).

Agartala: Timely vaccination of birds and animals, access to standard laboratories and maintaining bio-security are among the measures required to curb the sporadic outbreak of bird flu in India’s northeast, says a team of international and Indian experts touring the region.

Experts of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and India, who are on a five-day visit to Tripura to probe the causes of frequent bird flu outbreaks, have asked the northeastern states to maintain stipulated protocols to stop the contagious disease from resurfacing.

The International Rice Research Institute recently said that the rice wasted in the Philippines ever year could feed several million people.
Citing a study done by Food and Agriculture Organisation, the IRRI in its publication ‘Rice Today’ said the Philippines, the world’s biggest rice importer for several years, wasted rice that is worth minimum $5,35,00 every day, or at least $223 million a year, enough to feed 4.3 million.
The study also said all the countries with rice as a staple wasted the cereal in huge amounts.

The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation is funding a pilot project to enable the state’s farmers to reverse the environmental degradation and rural poverty in the state by applying scientific methods to groundwater management.

Baseline studies jointly conducted by the FAO, Centre and state government have identified seven districts in Andhra Pradesh to effectively implement the best practices in sustainable cropping patterns to combat climate change.

Farmers in 143 villages spread over nine pilot hydrological units in seven districts of Andhra Pradesh will soon show the world their expertise in estimating the available water resources and accordingly plan whether to go for a short or a long-duration crop.

This will be proof of their complete empowerment and considering the impact in the future of climate change, it will be the ultimate, said Peter E. Kenmore, India Representative of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO-UN).