North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called for a "radical improvement" in the country's farm machinery sector, state media reported on Wednesday, as the reclusive state pushes for agricultural modernisation to tackle chronic food shortages. Visiting a farm machine exhibition on Tuesday, Kim said it was important to map out a long-term development plan to achieve mechanisation of agricultural work for rural development, KCNA news agency said. A radical improvement in farm industrialisation "is an urgent requirement" Kim said, according to the KCNA report.
India on Thursday mourned the death of scientist Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan, the architect of the 1960s "green revolution" that brought an end to the chronic food shortages then plaguing the country.At the time, India's economy was hobbled by chronic food shortages that left it dependent on foreign aid, but by the early 1970s the new techniques had made it self-sufficient.