A recent report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter, provides a damning indictment of the role of speculation in food commodities in fuelling the global food crisis. The report – 'Food Commodities Speculation and Food Price Crisis – was released on the eve of an emergency meeting of the UN-FAO on the instability in agricultural markets. The global food crisis in 2007-08 led to...

The department of food and public distribution has rejected both proposals of the National Advisory Council (NAC) to provide food security, saying the government risked running up against supply constraints and taking on an unsustainable fiscal burden. The rejection by the ministry of consumer affairs, food and public distribution means that both NAC, headed by Congress party president Sonia Gandhi, and the government will have to go back to the drawing board...

The mountainous state-owned food stocks lying in the open and rotting in the rain are in stark conflict with a failing public distribution system , hunger, malnutrition and high food prices. The poor management of food stocks provoked the Supreme Court to transgress into executive domain when, on August 12, the court made certain directions like limiting procurement to covered warehousing capacity and distributing the rotting foodgrains free of cost...

Blame stubborn procurement policy as the root of all evil. With the government sitting on heaps of foodgrain and with an acute shortage of quality storage facilities, analysts, some within the government, suggest exporting foodgrain and reviewing procurement policy. The suggestion is gaining ground among advisors and experts, given the current global situation, where wheat prices are on the rise on fears of subdued production in drought-hit countries like Russia, Uzbekistan and...

Global foodgrain prices are likely to remain high in the coming months despite high output estimates this season. Bad weather in Brazil and Russia and rising global demand have made the grain market sensitive. The assessment of the damage due to dry weather in Russia, Western Australia and South America and floods in India, China and Pakistan is yet to be done. This is offering grain traders speculative opportunity on futures...