Abundant reserves, says Beijing $1.96-billion relief effort under way China on Tuesday said a record drought across its major wheat-producing provinces would not impact global food prices, with the country expected to meet its demand from “abundant reserves.” “China is self-reliant on food,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ma Zhaoxu told a regular press briefing. He was responding to a question on global concerns triggered last week after the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation...

As food prices rose for the seventh month in a row in January, contributing to recent popular unrest in the Middle East and a spike in commodities purchases by developing countries last week, some analysts are quick to make comparisons to the dry years of 2007-2008. But others warn against panic and oversimplified predictions of an impending food crisis, which contribute to price volatility. "It is important to underline – and we've...

World food prices hit a new record high in January after rising for a seventh consecutive month, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said Thursday, warning the poor would be hit hardest. The FAO Food Price Index, which monitors monthly price changes for a basket of commodities, averaged 231 points in January -- up 3.4 percent from December and its highest level since FAO started measuring food prices in...

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...

Warning against high inflationary trends, United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has asked developing countries not to take short-term policy measures like export curbs to contain food prices. Developing countries should "carefully examine the implications of high food prices and not to take any policy actions that might appear useful in the short term but could have harmful, longer-term effects or even aggravate the situation", the UN body said, while...