After announcing food prices had reached record levels last week, the United Nation’s (UN) Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is now trying to play down concerns about shortages. The FAO’s representative for Asia and the Pacific region, Hiroyuki Konuma, admitted that food supply and demand were tight but said there were sufficient grain stocks to feed populations. Though certain foods such as sugar, meat, corn and soybeans are selling at a...

The Bihar government has launched an "organic farming promotion programme" for the cultivation of organic crops in all the districts of the state. The government has decided to develop 38 "organic grams (organic villages)" for which a sum of Rs 255 crore has been sanctioned for five years. Some of these villages are: Dahour (Patna), Sartha (Nalanda), Belsand (Gopalganj), Gaighat Jaata (Muzaffarpur), Rajapaakar (Vaishali) and Narpatganj (Araria). This programme is being run...

India's reported willingness to relax its ceiling on cotton exports to accommodate the Pakistani demand for the commodity if Pakistan will permit the overland export of onions is a welcome development. The floods in Pakistan affected some portion of its cotton crop, and the country is now short of the commodity for its domestic textile and yarn industry, the mainstay of its fragile economy; heavy and unseasonal rains have caused...

Farmers' protesting ban on cotton and onion exports on Monday created a few moments of panic as they set ablaze a trolley-full of cotton some 200 metres from the Nagpur airport building. The situation was soon brought under control and farmers dispersed after the symbolic protest. Over 2000 farmers led by Bacchu Kadu, the maverick independent MLA from Achalpur in Amravati district, marched through the busy Wardha road to airport...

Export of sugar, hike in Above Poverty Line price under Public Distribution System put on hold A meeting convened by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday to discuss inflation and ways to tackle it, particularly the zooming prices of onion, vegetables, fruits, eggs and milk, remained “inconclusive,” official sources said. The Ministers concerned will meet Dr. Singh again in a day or two to come up with measures to tackle food...