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China, the world's biggest grower of rice, will start planting the grain in Tanzania next year as global food shortages create investment opportunities for the Asian country, a government report said. Chongqing Seed Corporation, a seed researcher and producer based in south-western Chongqing city, will plant its proprietary rice in a pilot project in the central African country, a report on China's ministry of commerce's website said.

India, a major importer of pulses, is faced with a delay in shipments of urad and tur owing to the cyclone in Myanmar, a major exporting nation. With an annual supply of 1.5 million tonnes of pulses to India, Myanmar accounts for almost 50 per cent of the country's annual pulses imports. "The cyclone would lead to a one-month delay in shipments of urad and tur. Shipments to the tune of 50,000 tonnes is estimated to have been stuck," said K C Bhartiya, president of the Pulses Importers Association.

Even as the world faces an unprecedented shortage in items of staple food and the consequent rise in global prices, President George W Bush has brewed up another storm in a tea-cup by holding India responsible. According to his logic, growing prosperity amongst the Indian middle-class has led to demand on its part for better food, causing prices to sky-rocket. The latest Bushism is just a take-off from what his Secretary of State had asserted earlier.

The government's decision to suspend futures trading in four more agri commodities has come under fire from the committee which studied the impact of trading of essential items on their prices but found no conclusive evidence. The committee's chairperson and members today expressed their disappointment calling the decision "irrational". "It is obvious that the government has taken a decision without taking our view into consideration. There is a bit of overreaction," chairman of the committee and Planning Commission member Abhijit Sen told Business Standard.

Grameen, the pioneering microlending institution, has seen a sharp rise in problems for millions of poor borrowers across the developing world in repaying loans as food prices soar, according to Muhammad Yunus, its founder and Nobel Peace Prize winner. Food prices have jumped in the past year, sparking riots in more than 30 countries and rising protectionism as governments seek to ensure food supplies.

Baltimore: Carolyn Stanley, a single mother with five children, receives $327 in food stamps each month to feed her family. With prices for staples like bread and cheese going ever higher, each month is harder than the last. She buys hot dogs over higher-quality meat and feeds her kids cereal, but even with other government support she often has to seek help from local churches and from friends. "The food runs out somewhere within the middle of the month, or getting close to the end,' said Stanley, 49. "It is not easy. I pray.'

The Indian Medical Association (IMA) today defended its decision to endorse a particular brand of fruit juices and cereals arguing it has always favoured healthy food. "It is an endorsement of the ingredients of products and not the products themselves. Besides, the endorsement is not supposed to be displayed on the packets," IMA Secretary S N Misra said. Everybody knows fruit juices are good for health and similarly the other product Oatmeal cereal is good for keeping cholesterol levels under check, he said.

The inflation rate continues to increase in local markets as the world plunges into a food crisis driven by low production due to drought. According to a new report by Nepal Rastra Bank, inflation rate reached 7.2 percent in the first eight months of the current fiscal year compared to 6.2 percent the same period last year.

I refer to the FPJ report about Bush blaming India for world's food shortage. Bush & Rice have accused India along with some other countries, of overconsuming the food products such as rice & wheat which has brought a shortage to the rest of the world.

At your local kirana store, the middle income upwardly mobile Indian can be found buying branded atta which he proudly takes home and also a kilo of jwar and makka which he buys daily to feed the pigeons in his neighbourhood locality square. A mile away in a squatters colony, under a plastic shed a family of 5 also buys 1 kilo of makka daily to feed their hungry stomachs.

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