Billions of dollars are being made by investors in a speculative "food bubble" that's created record food prices, starving millions and destabilising countries, experts now conclude. Wall Street investment firms and banks, along with their kin in London and Europe, were responsible for the technology dot-com bubble, the stock market bubble, and the recent U.S. and UK housing bubbles. They extracted enormous profits and their bonuses before the inevitable collapse of...

In India, people are upset about onions. Expensive cooking oil is causing hoarding in China, a practice banned by the government. Meanwhile, flour and bread are the main source of riots in Algeria and now Jordan. Worries over food prices are gathering pace and triggering alarm among politicians across the world. For there is nothing more likely to bring down a government than ignoring starving citizens, as Marie Antoinette found to...

What’s Going Wrong?     * Market intelligence remains a weak link; farm policies rarely reflect correct scenario     * Extensive damage to crop in Maharashtra not factored in promoting onion, tomato exports     * Middlemen make capital while farmers realise 10-15% margin, not enough to recoup losses     * Government market intervention capacity limited to foodgrains and pulses **** India’s worst-kept secret was finally revealed when the government threw up its hands in despair in the...

Food prices globally are rising to dangerous levels. There is talk of a coming crisis, like the ones that produced riots around the world in 2008 and 1974. Many of the ingredients of a disaster are present, but governments can stop the problem before it causes too much damage. A warning sign is the price of traded staples like wheat, corn and rice. Prices shot up in 2010, soaring 26...

Pawan Goenka noticed something unusual last year—tractor sales were climbing even though India had its worst monsoon in more than three decades and farm output dropped 2.8% in the three months to December last fiscal. The umbilical cord that tied rainfall patterns and tractor sales seemed to have been ruptured. The president of auto and tractor maker Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd offers an interesting explanation to this puzzle: growing labour shortages...