"Nichts mehr davon, ich bitt euch. Zu essen gebt ihm, zu wohnen. Habt ihr die Blöße bedeckt, gibt sich die Würde von selbst." Friedrich Schiller
May 2008	FOOD for PEACE

India Needs a Second Green Revolution, Says Indian President Mrs. Patil With less than a week left before the FAO-organized High-Level Conference on World Food Security to begin in Rome, Indian President Mrs. Pratibha Patil urged the Indian authorities to launch a second green revolution in the spirit of the first one carried out in the 1960s, the revolution which prevented large-scale starvation in India and made India food secured. Prior to President's call, one of the architects of India's green revolution and a leading plant geneticist, Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan (widely known as MS), warned the Indian political authorities that unless India produces a second Green Revolution, India's 1.1 billion people will face huge social turmoil. Pointing out that so far there has been no sign of major steps to make that happen, MS said "what we need is political action; we need politicians to walk the talk." India's agriculture has been in decline in recent years due to gross neglect of the powers-that-be, and growing at a far slower pace than the overall economy. In 2006, India was forced to import grain for the first time in years, ringing alarm bells about food security. The country has updated its services and manufacturing sectors, which account for around 60 percent of economic output. But some two-thirds of its population still live off agriculture, which has attained a growth of about three percent over the last decade, MS pointed out.