Food prices are soaring, a wealthier Asia is demanding better food and farmers cannot keep up. In short, the world faces a food crisis and in some places it is already boiling over. Around the globe, people are protesting and governments are responding with often counterproductive controls on prices and exports - a new politics of scarcity in which ensuring food supplies is becoming a major challenge for the 21st century.

PARIS: Spare a thought for the world's poor and hungry when you tune into the next episode of U.S. recession watch this week. Sky-high food prices are prompting one country after another to curtail exports in favor of domestic supply, a trend India joined Friday hard on the heels of Vietnam with a sharp increase in export prices for rice, a national staple in both countries. Cameroon, smarting from food price riots that rights groups say left as many as 100 people dead last month, announced cutbacks in official travel abroad to help finance wage rises for state employees.

HANOI: Rising prices and a growing fear of scarcity have prompted some of the world's largest rice producers to announce drastic limits on the amount of rice they export. The price of rice, a staple in the diets of nearly half the world's population, has almost doubled on international markets in the last three months. That has pinched the budgets of millions of poor Asians and raised fears of civil unrest.

Riots hit several towns in Burkina Faso in late February after the government announced it would reduce taxes on imported goods rather than lowering prices of essentials. Protesters took to the

A GROUP of ministers (GoM) is scheduled to meet here on April 2 for considering measures to check spiralling food prices.

On the heels of fixing a higher minimum export price (MEP) on basmati and non-basmati rice on March 5, 2008, the Government on Thursday night hiked the MEP on basmati rice further to $1,100 per tonne