As other staples soar, potatoes break new ground

Reuters
As wheat and rice prices surge, the humble potato — long derided as a boring tuber prone to making you fat — is being rediscovered as a nutritious crop that could cheaply feed an increasingly hungry world.
Potatoes, which are native to Peru, can be grown at almost any elevation or climate: from the barren, frigid [...]

Key findings of food crisis report - Main points from the UN study of global agriculture

Guardian
Bio-energy
Millions of people depend on traditional bio-energy like wood fuels and the report urges improvements in this area. At the moment biofuels like bio-ethanol and biodiesel compete for land and water with food crops and are not very efficient. They can also often cause deforestation and damage soils and water.
Biotechnology
The report highlights the significant lack [...]

Agriculture futures mostly up after Kazhakstan bans exports

AP
Agriculture futures mostly rose Tuesday after Kazakhstan banned wheat exports to help ease spiraling food inflation in the Central Asian nation, in the process adding to global supply concerns.
Other commodities traded mostly higher, with crude oil rising to a record just under $114 and gold and silver also gaining.
Kazakhstan announced Tuesday it will suspend wheat [...]

Exit policy for farmers

When Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram said the other day that India could do with 20 per cent of the existing farmers, he was merely echoeing what the World Bank/IMF have been saying for long. No wonder, the government seems to be in a tearing hurry to lay out an ‘exit policy’ for farmers.
From food [...]

Corn, Soybeans Rise on `Buying Panic’ to Avoid Food Shortages

Corn and soybeans rose for a second straight day on speculation global demand will increase as nations seek to slow inflation and avoid food shortages.
The Philippines, the biggest rice importer, yesterday urged Asian nations to convene an emergency meeting on the region’s food crisis. Kazakhstan, the world’s fifth-largest wheat exporter, banned shipments of the grain [...]

Rice price at record as Jakarta blocks exports

Here

The grains of truth in a crisis are food for thought, and action

The Age
THE body needs energy to function, which it gets from food. When there is no food, the body turns to itself to produce that energy from its fat and muscles. When that supply is exhausted, the body’s organs start to shut down. Starvation is a slow death. Every day, millions of people stare into [...]

State’s corn production skyrockets

California produced a bumper crop of corn in 2007, with production climbing 98 percent thanks to factors such as an increased demand for ethanol, a corn product used as a clean-burning additive for gasoline.
Farmers in the state harvested 1 million tons of corn in 2007 compared with 508,000 tons in 2006, agriculture officials reported last [...]

We may have to ‘buy milk in’

THE dairy industry is warning that the tradition-al daily pinta is at risk as UK milk output sinks to its lowest level in 39 years.
Domestic milk supplies are fast approaching the 1971 levels when national output was 12.9bn litres.
In that time the dairy industry made huge efficiency gains but the number of milk producers has [...]

Food riots to hit Manila soon?

The intensifying rice and food crisis in the Philippines has raised speculations that food riots comparable if not greater in intensity to those in Haiti last week that resulted in the fall of the government, may soon hit Manila. This scenario is being discussed and debated among food experts and economic and political observers in [...]