In The News

India’s Agriculture on the Brink

Deepak Gopinath March 27, 2013
Sound food policy should be a priority for India, on track for the world’s largest population by 2025. India has also achieved status as a major food exporter with rice, wheat and buffalo beef. Indian policies emphasize minimum support prices for farmers and subsidized crops for the poor, but these in turn spur food inflation, price volatility, overproduction of grains and overworked land. The...

Citizenship of Convenience

Tyler Grant March 5, 2013
Lifting restrictions on travel visas is supposed to spur tourism. Yet a few citizens do quick cost-benefit checks of other nations’ laws, then hop on planes, relocating for benefits: With the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution providing citizenship to those born in the United States, thousands of pregnant women travel to give birth, thus ensuring those children access to US public education....

Wildlife at the Mercy of International Trade Politics

March 5, 2013
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species regulates trade on endangered wildlife – so far 5000 animals and 29,000 plants. The parties meet about every three years, and at this year’s meeting in Bangkok, the US will propose a ban on trade in polar bears and their parts – a proposal opposed by ally Canada and supported by Russia. The US will also present a joint proposal with...

Bangladesh Tackles Climate Change, Fuses Rice Paddies With Fish Farms

Naimul Haq March 4, 2013
Low-lying countries like Bangladesh understand that they must adapt quickly to climate change – and explore a range of options. Saltwater intrusion is destroying rice paddies. Combining aquaculture with rice farming could increase nutrition levels of food, reduce environmental damage and increase output capacity of land and neighboring waters, suggests a report from a fisheries management...

Developing Countries and Global Trade

March 1, 2013
With almost any product – electronics, processed food, even some services – designs and components are sourced from multiple countries. A new report from the UN Commission on Trade and Development suggests that global investment and trade have become “inextricably intertwined through international production networks of growing degrees of complexity that now account for some 80 percent of the...

A Report Card for Global Food Giants

Stephanie Strom March 1, 2013
NGO Oxfam has developed a scoring mechanism to evaluate multinational food companies and their effects on the environment, labor and health, reports a New York Times blog. “The goal of the scorecard, called ‘Behind the Brands,’ is to motivate consumers to pressure companies like Nestlé, Kellogg and Mars to improve their policies on land and water use and the treatment of small farmers, among...

Soap Opera Diplomacy: Turkish TV in Greece

Robbie Moore February 27, 2013
Greece’s high rate of unemployment allows ample leisure time for watching television. Yet the economic crisis has also meant that Greek television producers can no longer afford to write, shoot and broadcast television shows. So stations have turned to affordable Turkish shows, which are gaining in popularity among Greeks, explains Robbie Moore for the International, adding that “Some in the...