PARAGUAY: Women’s Cooperative Buys in Bulk to Beat Food Inflation

Making the old saying "cheaper by the dozen" their motto, a group of women in a poor neighbourhood of Asunción created a cooperative to buy food in bulk, in order to combat the rise in food prices.

ENVIRONMENT: Not Enough Done to Protect Biodiversity

The UN conference on biodiversity opened in the former German capital Bonn this week in the face of new evidence that many countries, particularly the industrialised ones, are not complying with their declared goal of "substantially reducing the loss of biological diversity."

ECONOMY-CUBA: Does the Ration Book Still Make Sense?

Criticised as one more sign of the failures of socialism, or viewed as a right that should not be given up, the ration book, part of Cuban life for 46 years, could disappear as a result of the transformations needed in the country’s economy.

DEVELOPMENT: More Fears Rise Around Doha Deal

As WTO negotiations pick up this week, some developing countries are in growing doubt that a deal liberalising their economies further could help them cope with the food crisis.

PERU: Women – The Guardians of Potato Biodiversity

In South America’s Andes mountain region, indigenous women have traditionally been responsible for selecting, conserving and managing seed potatoes from the countless native varieties of the crop, thus ensuring diversity and continued production while contributing to food security among their people.

TRADE-MALAWI: Turmoil as Tobacco Prices Fluctuate

Malawi’s tobacco industry has been in turmoil after wildly fluctuating prices led protesting farmers to force the closure of the auction floors.

IRAQ: Nature Adds to Occupation Blows

Farmers in the Diyala province in Iraq have been hit by just about every crisis possible. First the security disaster dried up supplies and markets, then lack of electricity cut irrigation, and now comes a drying up of water resources.

LATIN AMERICA: Food Price Inflation Threatens Children

Child malnutrition in Latin America and the Caribbean will be aggravated by global food shortages, even though the region produces much more food than it consumes, say experts and officials.

Q&A: Can Save the MDGs Yet

White banners were draped across public buildings in much of Europe during 2005 as an unlikely coalition of celebrities, church groups and trade unionists took part in the Make Poverty History campaign. The Group of Eight (G8) top industrialised countries and the European Union responded by promising to double their aid to Africa by 2010 at a summit in Gleneagles, Scotland.

EGYPT: Giving With One Hand, Taking Back With the Other

In an effort to offset soaring inflation, President Hosni Mubarak last month announced generous salary increases for all public sector employees. The gesture lost its lustre days later, however, when the government drastically raised prices of subsidised fuel.

DEVELOPMENT: Can Sorghum Solve the Biofuels Dilemma?

A new crop that provides food, animal feed and fuel at the same time promises to help developing countries redirect money spent on oil imports to benefit their own farmers. Is sweet sorghum biofuel's "holy grail"?

TRADE: Doha Talks Sweating Over Tropical Products

The hot potato these days in the Doha Round of World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations is tropical products, a burning issue for the world’s poorest countries.

IRAQ: Food Crisis Hits Fallujah

Sharp increases in food prices have generated a new wave of anti-occupation and anti-U.S. sentiment in Fallujah.

DEVELOPMENT: Food Crisis Symptom of Dubious Liberalisation

The high food prices that have sparked riots in many parts of the developing world - from Indonesia, India and Bangladesh to Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire and Haiti - should come as no surprise. These are only the latest in a series of events many developing countries have suffered as a result of opening their borders and neglecting domestic agriculture.

BRAZIL: Sugarcane Alcohol Tarnished by U.S. Maize Ethanol

Recent efforts by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to clearly mark the difference between Brazilian ethanol and the agrofuels produced by the United States are an admission that signing an agreement with Washington to promote a global bioethanol market was a serious political mistake, say analysts.

PERU: Highlands Families Work to Save Their Birthright – the Potato

A plate of parboiled potatoes of various sizes, shapes and colours welcomes the visitor to Huama, a town in the southern Peruvian Andes, at an altitude of 4,500 metres.

CHINA: Buying Farmland Abroad, Ensuring Food Security

Rattled by rapidly rising global grain prices, China is looking at strategies to ensure long-term food security for its 1.3 billion people such as procuring farmland overseas and opposing the formation of any international grain price- fixing monopolies.

LATIN AMERICA: Food Summit Declares Regional Emergency

The presidential summit on "Food for Life", held in Nicaragua, has ended with 16 Latin American countries agreeing to produce more food and sell it at low prices through strategic alliances, amid criticisms of free markets and capitalism.

DEVELOPMENT: Food Crisis Linked to Doha Deal

The issue of rising food prices was raised at the WTO's General Council meeting Wednesday, and for the first time, discussed in some detail. But there remains, as one African delegate put it, "a lot of confusion about the rising prices of commodities and the Doha Round. Somebody needs to demystify the links. The D-G (Director-General) is using this as a bait to catch us on concluding the Round as soon as possible."

ARGENTINA: Food Inflation Hits People Close to Poverty Line

Poverty is once again growing in Argentina, reversing the downward trend recorded since 2003, as a result of price inflation mainly affecting basic food products, analysts say. But the government’s only response, according to its critics, has been to stop reporting poverty statistics.

MEXICO: Pemex Oozes Corruption

Funds belonging to the Mexican state oil monopoly, Pemex, have paid in recent years for liposuction treatment for the wife of the company’s chief executive, a presidential candidate’s campaign, contracts with firms facing legal action, and the whims of trade union leaders who are not required to account for their expenses.