Pope Francis has told thousands of workers and diplomats at the UN agency which delivers food to crisis areas it is “a strange paradox” that food often cannot get through to those suffering due to war but weapons can.

USA: A woman who worked briefly for the president of a Maine college has filed a discrimination lawsuit against the school, alleging she was expected to play tennis, jog and watch “chick flicks” with her female boss.

Food in countries hit by ebola is getting more expensive and will become scarcer because many farmers will not be able to access fields, a UN food agency has warned.

Food in countries hit by Ebola is getting more expensive and will become scarcer because many farmers will not be able to access fields, a UN food agency has warned.

“When the Son of Man shall come in his glory and all the holy angels with him, he shall separate one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats”— Matthew

Every year, we waste or lose 1.3bn metric tonnes of food — one third of the world’s annual food production. The sheer scale of the number makes it almost impossible to grasp, no matter how one approaches it. Try to imagine 143,000 Eiffel Towers stacked one on top of another.

The use of grain and oilseed crops to make biofuels should be “looked at in great depth,” as countries face food shortages and high prices, Egypt’s minister for agriculture and land reclamation said.

A series of events related to family farming will be organised in many European Union member states in the next year.

Tofu and salad to save us from extinction, anyone? They may be the only hope for continuing life on the planet, according to the world’s leading experts on water.

The world’s top farm producers in the G20 countries must agree coordinated action to ease worries about food prices, the head of the UN’s food agency said yesterday, as he and other experts bemoaned a huge global waste of food and water.

In three decades, US taxpayers have paid out $20 billion in subsidies for ethanol products, which allowed the oil substitute gain a small part of the fuel market — while using nearly 40% of American maize — grown on 72.7m US acres.

Drought-stricken crops and record high grain prices have strengthened critics of the EU biofuel industry, adding fears of a food crisis to their claims that it does not ultimately reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

France, the US, and G20 president Mexico will hold a conference call at the end of August to discuss whether an emergency international meeting is required to tackle soaring grain prices caused by the worst US drought in half a century.

Scientists in Israel have developed a way of using satellite images to help farmers detect small-scale changes in climate and improve their harvests, a method that could bolster food supplies for an increasingly hungry world population.

A RAPIDLY growing population, climate change and degradation of land and water resources are likely to make the world more vulnerable to food insecurity and challenge the task of feeding its people by 2050, the UN’s food agency said.

Former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan has criticised world leaders for failing to take bold action on climate change, which he said threatens to worsen the food crisis that has left a billion people hungry.

FOOD-PRICE inflation concerns for policy makers are set to persist even as rice declines and wheat trades below this year’s peak, according to the United Nations, which said that importers are still paying more than a year ago.

A SHOWCASE of the spirit and genius of rural Ireland was how President Mary McAleese described the National Ploughing Championships in Athy, Co Kildare yesterday.

THE number of people fleeing famine-hit areas of Somalia is likely to rise dramatically and could overwhelm international aid efforts in the Horn of Africa, a UN aid official has claimed.

GENDER equality in farming will play a key role in the long-term global fight against hunger, Agriculture Minister of State Shane McEntee told the Conference of the UN’s Food and Agriculture organisation (FAO) in Rome yesterday.

More than 40 fish species in the Mediterranean could vanish in the next few years, a new study has warned.

Hundreds of thousands of women are taking part in rallies around the globe to mark International Women's Day.

Global food prices have reached new highs amid a warning that oil price surges could trigger further increases.

World food prices have reached a new peak, says a UN agency.

THE dilemma for food policymakers was never clearer.

The estimated number of chronically hungry people in the world has dipped considerably below the one billion mark thanks to good harvests and a drop in food prices, according to figures released by the United Nations today.

One of the UN's food agencies has called a special meeting on rising food prices amid concerns over shortages.

THE European Union says it will spend an extra €30m to fund emergency aid for victims of devastating floods in Pakistan.

POPE Benedict XVI decried the worsening plight of the world’s one billion hungry yesterday as a United Nations food summit rallied around a strategy of more help to farmers in poor nations but rebuffed a UN appeal to commit billions to the plan.

World leaders agreed today to a new plan to fight global hunger by helping poor countries feed themselves, but refused to say how much they were willing to give.

The UN called on rich and powerful countries to tackle “unacceptable” global hunger at the start of a food summit today aimed at slashing the numbers of undernourished people.

Funding from an Islamic bank will help develop agriculture in poor countries, a UN food agency said ahead of a summit to discuss the goal of reducing the number of hungry people in the world.

The economic crisis has pushed the ranks of the world's hungry to a record one billion, the United Nations said today.

THERE may be little enough we, as a small island of less than five million people bobbing away like so much flotsam between continental Europe and the Atlantic’s western fringes, can do to influence climate change, but we can prepare for the consequences projected by so many reputable scientists.

THIRTY jobs a month are being lost due to Government inaction to develop the salmon and shellfish sector, the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries and Food was told by a delegation from the Irish Farmers Association’s Aquaculture Section.

PARTS of North Korea are experiencing their worst levels of hunger in nearly a decade, the UN World Food Programme said yesterday as it called on donors to provide urgent assistance over the next few months.

A UN food summit promised late yesterday to relieve hunger threatening one billion people, but anti-poverty campaigners said rich countries needed to commit to long-term action to boost food output and free up trade.