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...

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 food subsidy bill for 2010-11 could shoot up by nearly Rs 25,000 crore to touch Rs 80,000 crore, putting further pressure on the government’s finances, a food ministry official said on Tuesday. The government has budgeted Rs 55,578 crore for the current fiscal. The sharp increase in the subsidy is because of higher minimum support price ( MSP )) for crops and the government holding food stock that are nearly three times...

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...

India, the world’s biggest producer and consumer of pulses, has extended ban on pulses exports until further orders, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said on Tuesday, as it battles to rein in high food prices. The government had in June 2006 banned exports of pulses, which has a weight of 0.72 per cent in the wholesale price index. India’s food price index rose 12.13 per cent in the year to December 11, government...