The Delhi Grain Merchants Association on Wednesday threatened to stop purchasing fresh stocks of food grain if the state 'government continued its raids in shops. DGMA president 0 P Jain warned that their decision not to buy fresh stocks might result in spiralling prices due to grain scarcity. Jain said food grain traders were being targeted in the name of hoarding despite "prices being under check." "We cannot be blamed for scarcity and increase of prices of food grains in coming days as the government does not want us to keep stock," Gupta said.

Samake Bakary sells rice from wooden basins at Abobote market in the northern suburbs of Abidjan in C

One of the hardest concepts for a new student of monetary economics to grasp is that of a "bank run'

India, and the world, have experienced food crises before - and tackled them.

The world's food security structure seems to be crumbling and could give way to a serious crisis if not tackled on a war footing. Of course many factors -rising population, increasing demand for food in faster developing nations like India and China, drought conditions in many parts of world, expanding acreage for cash crops and finally diversion of farmlands to grow corn in America, Latin America and Europe for producing ethanol are responsible for depleting food stocks. But mainly it the sheer greed of oil producing countries that has driven the food prices to new unaffordable heights.

Soaring food prices are a "massacre" of the world's poor and are creating a global nutritional crisis, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday, calling it a sign that capitalism is in decline. His comments came only hours after the United Nations' World Food Program called more expensive food a "silent tsunami" that threatens to plunge more than 100 million people on every continent into hunger. "It is a true massacre what is happening in the world," Chavez said in a televised speech, citing UN statistics about deaths caused by hunger and malnourishment.

THE World Food Program has begun to cut the provision of school meals to some of the world's poorest children as the global crisis over food prices worsens. WFP executive director Josette Sheeran said on Tuesday that the price of basic foods was rising so rapidly that a shortfall in financing for its food relief programs had grown from $US500 million ($A530 million) to $US755 million in less than two months.

Soaring food prices are a "massacre' of the world's poor and are creating a global nutritional crisis, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday, calling it a sign that capitalism is in decline. His comments came only hours after the United Nations' World Food Program called more expensive food a "silent tsunami' that threatens to plunge more than 100 million people on every continent into hunger. "It is a true massacre what is happening in the world,' Chavez said in a televised speech, citing UN statistics about deaths caused by hunger and malnourishment.

The real solution for meeting shortages is to increase supplies instead of imposing controls. There is ample scope for increasing production of food grains -Brij Bhardwaj

Surging prices of essential commodities of daily consumption such as rice, potato, onion, mustard oil, vegetables and so on, at regular or long intervals has been a common phenomenon in our society over the decades. It comes about when both supply and demand go off from the equilibrium position. Whatever it may be, the fact of the matter is that every time the prices of many of these basic items soar, every time it is the common man who is hard-hit, simply because it creates some damaging effect on his shoe-string monthly budget with which is has to run his family.