There’s both good news and bad news on the food front.   The good news is that wheat, maize and pulses production during the current year will be the highest that India has seen. Wheat production was expected to be high, thanks to the twin advantages of a high procurement price —- higher than international prices —- and favourable weather conditions. But pulses production too has zoomed, because of the soaring prices in the...

With higher sowing of wheat, pulses, sugarcane, cotton and oilseeds reported this rabi season, there are expectations of a bumper crop production this year. The total food grains output is expected to be 232.07 million tonnes, which is only marginally lower than the record production of 234.47 million tonnes in 2008-09. Announcing the second advance estimates of food grains production for the 2010-11 crop year last week, Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar...

Global wheat harvests may trail demand for a second year, spurring hoarding and further price gains, said the United Nations. “Whenever you get the market as tight as we are now, hoarding becomes widespread,” Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, said in an interview by phone from Rome. Wheat, corn and soybeans soared to the highest levels since 2008 yesterday as a U.S. government report showed...

Agriculture department confirms high pesticide residues THE country’s regulators have failed to check the flow of pesticides into the food chain, suggests a monitoring report of the Department of Agriculture and the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, the country’s premier institute. Fruits, vegetables, poultry and milk are all laced with high pesticide residues —much above the maximum residue limits (MRL) set by the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act of 1954. Samples of...

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...