The world’s 1.4 billion small-scale farmers must be prioritised for support and investment if the world is to boost food production by 70% over the next 40 years, international development charity Progressio declares.

CAFOD and other UK-based development groups are critical of the North American Free Trade Agreement, finalised this month. It will impoverish Mexican workers, they say. Radical economic, trade and financial reform is needed.

The pursuit of cheap food coupled with the buying power of the big supermarkets is putting farming livelihoods at risk, the Church of England has told the Competition Commission. Making farmers pay for supermarkets’ own promotions is just one of a number of invisible and pernicious practices.

The Bishop of Exeter has encouraged congregations not just to thank God for the food they eat but to remember the farmers who produce it at their Harvest Festivals.

Churches are being urged to stand by to offer support to farming families, warning that the latest Foot and Mouth outbreak with has triggered the reimposition of an EU export ban, could spell disaster for the farming community.

The Rev Clifton Kirkpatrick, who moderates the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA), is urging fast-food giant Burger King to work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) to address wages and working conditions in the tomato fields.

Bread for the World, a national Christian anti-hunger network, plans to distribute thousands of educational kits to churches around the USA urging churchgoers to lobby members of Congress to change federal agricultural and nutrition programmes in favour of the world's ‚Ä' and the country's ‚Ä' poor.