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investments, and the vulnerability to commodity market fluctuations have resulted in sudden volatilities of food production and supplies.

The situation has been further aggravated with long-term neglect in agricultural development, reduced wheat production in several countries like Australia, high energy costs, divergence of crops to use for bio-fuels, undesirable subsidies, and increased focus of Government investment and spending on defense rather than rural infrastructure, all of which has beget unprecedented macro-impacts on world food situation. The need of the hour is to effect immediate responses to the exigent food crisis, kick-starting the process with discontinuance of food subsidies for middle classes, while shifting to more direct distribution so as to reach the poorest of the poor. Effecting market linkages to reach food where it is needed most, especially in staple crop production, and ensuring market access to small farmers is most desirable.

On the policy-making front, adopting pro-poor policy actions, revisiting aid priorities for agriculture and rural services, expanding social protection to the poor, and implementing the same as a cohesive action, would definitely help alleviate today's burden of feeding the poor. Very importantly, aligning such short-term strategies with long-term development goals would enable the world to bail out of the current quandary. It is an age-old adage that economic growth achieved through agriculture, can be done only by breaking the cycle of poverty, hunger, disease and instability. These can be mitigated through an integrated mid-term and long-term survival approach. Adopting value-chain approaches to agricultural production, while promoting growth and diversification, effecting agricultural science and technology-based solutions and emulating food security measures as adopted by China, are some of the pro-active solutions. In the long run, enduring measures that need to be adopted are enhancing resilience to natural calamities, improving disaster management, promoting risk-sharing, providing for weather and crop insurance, including social safety nets, and last, but not the very least, improving the international trade system to suit the needs of agro-based economies. As the groundwater-table in China and India gets depleted at an alarming level, an effective water management is called for. Most of the Asian countries are primarily agricultural economies, where rice is the largest crop produced. Rice is

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