-FAO   2013 third highest year on record for FAO Food Price Index Rome: The FAO Food Price Index averaged 206.7 points in December, nearly unchanged from the previous month, with a sharp increase in dairy prices and high meat values balancing out a steep decline in sugar quotations and lower cereal and oil prices. For 2013 as a whole, the index averaged 209.9 points - down 1.6 percent from 2012, and well below...

-The Hindu Bangalore is doing its bit for the desi cow as Harshini Vakkalanka discovers Bangalore: Desi cow ghee in earthen pots, fresh butter, sweetened hung curd, kalakand, basundi, rasamalai and rasagolla, kulfi, jamun rabadi, ladoo malai or motichoor ladoo; these may seem like the bane of every health-freak in the country not to mention diabetics but that's just the point. These desi cow milk sweets, made at Swarg Foods, a Bangalore-based organisation...

-The Indian Express Food inflation owes largely to agricultural markets being regulated by outdated laws. The RBI governor, Raghuram Rajan, has a difficult task this week. He has to decide whether to keep interest rates constant or raise them - bearing in mind the possible taper of the US Fed's bond buying programme, a decline in industrial production and a rise in inflation. The sharp increase in consumer price-based inflation, to more...

-Outlook Costly vegetables, particularly potato and onion, pushed the November wholesale inflation to a 14-month high of 7.52 per cent, making it difficult for the Reserve Bank to ease key policy rate. Vegetable prices shot up by 95.25 per cent in November as compared to 78.38 per cent in the previous month, said the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) inflation data released today. The overall inflation in the food segment comprising wheat, pulses, vegetables,...

-IPS News Bhubaneswar: More than a month after Cyclone Phailin battered Orissa, tribes in the eastern Indian coastal state are still feeling its wrath. Besides the damage to their homes and hearths, it has also meant a loss of their traditional food. "Calamities like Cyclone Phailin affect all equally, but the tribes are far more vulnerable to the impact of calamities because of lesser resilience," Special Relief Commissioner P.K. Mahapatra tells IPS. This...