Sri Lanka raises fuel prices: After doling out huge fuel subsidies for five months, the Sri Lankan government finally increased fuel prices on January 13. The price of petrol has increased by LKR 10

A food crisis looms large in Bangladesh after two waves of floods and a cyclone. Three natural disasters within four months have ruined the late-monsoon aman paddy, the second major cereal crop in

Keeping in view the assembly elections to be held in November, the Congress government in Delhi is making policies to woo voters. The government in a cabinet meeting today approved a programme to provide at least one-time meal to the poor in the Capital. A policy for the establishment of knowledge-based Special Economic Zones (SEZ) has also been approved. Besides, 10 common special courts would be set up to hear the trial of economic offences. The cabinet has also recommended summoning of budget session from March 17 to April 4.

Investments aimed at improving agricultural adaptation to climate change inevitably favor some crops and regions over others. An analysis of climate risks for crops in 12 food-insecure regions was conducted to identify adaptation priorities, based on statistical crop models and climate projections for 2030 from 20 general circulation models.

Some of the most profound and direct impacts of climate change over the next few decades will be on agricultural and food systems. A research by Lobell et al show that increasing temperatures and declining precipitation over semiarid regions are likely to reduce yields for corn, wheat, rice, and other primary crops in the next two decades. These changes could have a substantial impact on global food security.

The recent rapid increases in the international prices of many basic food commodities have raised many questions from policy-makers, the media, the public, and the farmers who have the opportunity to benefit from the situation.

China has levied taxes on exports of food grains such as wheat, corn, rice and soybean from January 1, 2008. The move is apparently aimed at reining in surging domestic food prices, which have driven

"We apologise for recent price increases," reads the sign over the bread counter, "but they are due to global factors beyond our control." This is not a Third World food stall but an upscale supermarket in Brussels, capital of the European Union, whose farming system was once notorious for the mountains of surplus grain it produced. Those mountains are now gone. The world is down to its lowest grain stocks for decades, and food prices are up around the world.

While cutting down rainforests to grow palm oil for biofuels may constitute "madness" (1 December 2007, p 50), burning other vegetable oils is no more sane, nor less damaging to Indonesia's rainforests. Indonesia is expected to increase its palm oil production by more than half over the next 10 years. This is driven, in part, by China, which used to buy rapeseed oil from Europe for food and for industrial uses, but is switching to Indonesian palm oil because Europe's cars and trucks now burn the rapeseed oil as a biofuel.

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