Faced with soaring food prices for the second time in three years, senior United Nations experts today called for greater investment in agriculture from both the public and private sectors to increase smallholder productivity.   “Policy-related solutions are also required to increase the longer-term resilience of global agriculture to allow greater levels of supply to markets as demand grows,” UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Senior Economist Jamie Morrison told a meeting...

Record high food prices are putting added pressure on the United Nations agency that helps feed nearly 100 million of the world’s poorest people, with officials warning of a potential “perfect storm” combination of soaring costs, weather emergencies and political instability. “We are on red alert and we are continually assessing needs and reassessing plans and stand ready to assist,” UN World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director Josette Sheeran told the...

In a reformist move long recommended by various economists and panels, the government has set up a task force to create a way to directly transfer cash to the ultimate beneficiaries of various subsidy schemes, which are, at best, messy and, at worst, ineffective. The task force will be headed by Nandan Nilekani, chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India. A pilot will be rolled out in the next four...

Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan made the plea following farmers' protest Go-ahead for export of 3 non-basmati varieties Onion prices as low as Rs. 4-5 a kg in Maharashtra Union Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma on Friday said the government was actively considering a request from Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan to lift the ban on export of onions whose prices crashed last week triggering farmers' protest. In a related development, the government...

After increasing slowly and steadily from historic lows, world rice prices tripled in just six months during 2007-08. The price surge caused much anxiety because so many of the world’s poor are rice consumers. And it caught many by surprise as market fundamentals were sound. Indeed, it was government policies, rather than changes in the production and consumption of rice, that drove the surge. This suggests that improved government policies...