Consumers may have to pay substantially more for pulses, oilseed, and rice in the coming months if the government accepts the recommendations of an expert panel to increase farm-gate price of these commodities by up to 30%, further stoking food inflation. The Commission on Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), under the ministry of agriculture, has recommended a 25% rise in the floor price of cotton, 16% rise in paddy, 30% rise...

-Reuters Global food prices rose in March for a third successive month, driven by gains in grains and vegetable oils, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation said on Thursday, putting food inflation firmly back on the economic agenda. Food prices hit record highs in February 2011 and stoked protests connected to the Arab Spring wave of civil unrest in some north African and middle eastern countries. They then receded but started...

-The Business Standard   Learning from the jatropha mistake The tropical shrub jatropha curcas, touted a decade ago as a commercially feasible source of biofuel to alleviate the global energy crisis, seems to have let its proponents down quite comprehensively. Millions of hectares of land in the arid areas of India and in many other Asian and African countries were turned into jatropha plantations in the expectation that the oil derived from its...

-FAO FAO today forecast that 2012 world wheat production will be the second highest on record at 690 million tonnes and also announced that  international food prices rose one percent in February —  the second increase in two months.  Published today, FAO’s quarterly Crop Prospects and Food Situation report forecast a 2012 wheat crop 10 million tonnes or 1.4 percent down from the record 2011 harvest but still well above the average...

There is a rush to cash in on micronutrient deficiency in India through fortification of food Andhra Pradesh Foods, a state government enterprise, is ramping up its fortified food production capacity. It provides ready-to-eat and ready-to-cook foods like upma mix, sweet porridge and khichdi mix, fortified with iron, zinc and other vitamins, to infants and pregnant and lactating women under the Centre’s Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS). The effort to double its...