Projects aimed at food security

India will provide "appropriate land" for "food parks" across the country that will be built in collaboration with Israel, United States and the United Arab Emirates. The plan for the "integrated food parks" was announced in a Joint Statement after the leaders of the I2U2 grouping - India, Israel, the UAE and the USA - announced on Thursday that they would bring in private capital for specific projects in the fields of water, energy, transportation, health, space and food security.

Food safety and transfer of modern technology and knowledge to farmers in Georgia were discussed between Agriculture Minister Otar Shamugia and United States officials in Washington, the Ministry announced on Friday. 

During his visit to the capital, Shamugia held meetings with Cary Fowler, the US Department of State’s Special Envoy for Global Food Security, and Jewel Bronaugh, the US Deputy Secretary of Agriculture.

Main photo: Bangladesh’s side of the no-man’s land separating the country from India, Lalmonirhat district has been sitting idle for years but just over the edge, sprawling tea plantations are seen in the neighbouring nation. Considering the economic benefits of tea farming in these lands, local farmers have called for more public and private investment in this regard. This photo was taken in the Angorpota area of Patgram upazila in Lalmonirhat recently. Photo: S Dilip Roy

LANDac International Conference 2022 Session Summary

Chhatarpur (India) – As the monsoon storms bear down on India, a dedicated group of women hope that after years of backbreaking labour, water shortages will no longer leave their village high and dry.

Banner image: Aerial photo taken on June 27, 2022 shows villagers working in terraced fields in Huojiagou Village of Shimen Town in Lulong County, north China's Hebei Province. Recent years Lulong County has implemented the land transformation of barren hills and wild grass land into terraced fields. Farming facilities including field paths and drainage channels have been constructed to improve agricultural production conditions. (Xinhua/Yang Shiyao)

The National Assembly (NA) on June 24 adopted the Forest and Nature Conservation Bill of Bhutan 2021 with 38 ‘Yes’, and two “ No” votes and two abstained.

Chairperson of the Environment and Climate Change Committee, Gyem Dorji, said that the Act, which was enacted in 1995, was not amended for more than two decades.

“During these years, the forest department was guided by executive orders and notifications, which were incorporated into rules, regulations, and guidelines,” he said.

Main photo: Sri Lanka facing worst economic crisis (file photo-representational photo). Photo by AP/PTI.

Sri Lanka’s army established its Green Agriculture Steering Committee (GASC) to supplement and promote the food security programme in the country facing worst economic crisis.

The Sri Lanka Army will take part in a farming drive aimed at cultivating over 1,500 acres of barren or abandoned state land to multiply food production and avert any shortage in the future, according to a media report.

• Much of the landscape of Indonesia’s East Kalimantan province has been transformed, its formerly vast forests razed for logging, monocrop agriculture and open-cast coal mining.
• A recently published study analyzes how waves of extractive industries have affected the inhabitants of one village in the province
• The cumulative impacts of these industries were found to be severe, but also to vary depending on multiple factors including ethnicity, gender, wealth and age.

• Fires have swept through large swaths of peatland forest in the western part of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island since the start of the year, an area that usually sees much smaller, controlled fires.
• Environmental activists say they suspect the fires might be linked to palm oil companies with plantations in and around the burned areas.
• They warn the burning could get worse in the coming months, with the dry season in this part of Sumatra expected to peak only in August.

JAKARTA — Fires in areas of carbon-intense peatland forest on the