Aug. 20 (Bloomberg) -- A worldwide food crisis that sent prices of wheat, rice and corn to records and sparked riots from Haiti to Ivory Coast may be over after farmers boosted plantings, a top official in India's food ministry said.
``I don't think there's a crisis now,'' said T. Nanda Kumar, the country's food secretary, who is responsible for formulating food security policy in the world's second-most populous nation. ``Food will be available.''
Farmers from Australia to China increased sowings to benefit from higher prices, helping stockpiles gain from 30-year lows. An end to the shortages may help countries including India and Egypt ease trade barriers and cool inflation. Soaring prices increased the number of hungry people by 50 million last year, according to the United Nations.
``Expectations have risen about bigger harvests,'' Parshuram Ray, director at the Center for Environment and Food Security, a New Delhi-based research company, said by phone. ``That's helped cool prices.''
Sri Lanka's central bank said today declining fuel and food costs will ease the second-fastest inflation rate in Asia. Consumer prices in capital Colombo slowed in July for the first time in seven months. China's inflation cooled last month to the weakest pace in 10 months.
More Plantings
Record soybean crops in China and India, an almost doubling of wheat production in Australia, and bigger rice harvests in Thailand and Vietnam have eased shortfalls this year.
The global production outlook for wheat and soybeans is ``very good,'' while rice is still expensive, Kumar said in a New Delhi interview Aug. 18. ``Rice is softening, but I don't think it has softened adequately.''
Rice more than doubled in the past three years as China, Egypt, India and Vietnam curbed exports. Grain prices will remain higher than the average of the past five years even as production improves, Kumar said.
Commodity prices slumped since July 3 as the dollar gained 6.8 percent against a gauge of six major currencies in the past month and crude oil fell 22 percent from its record reducing the attraction of bio-fuels made from grains and sugar cane.
Rice has tumbled 29 percent from its record, while wheat and corn have dropped 35 percent and 26 percent from their peaks.
India, the second-biggest producer of rice and wheat, may need a second ``green revolution'' to meet food demand driven by rising incomes among its 1.1 billion people, Kumar said.
`Green Revolution'
Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan, the 83-year-old agriculture scientist who spearheaded India's first ``green revolution'' in the 1960s that made the country self-sufficient in food, has said the solution to higher farm output lies in providing better remuneration to growers.
``You may call it by any name, what we need is more food,'' said Kumar. India needs to increase its wheat and rice production by 3.5 million tons every year to meet its growing demand and cover emergencies, he said.
Supplies of farm products haven't kept pace with demand from consumers who have become richer in the past five years as India's economy registered the fastest economic expansion in its 60 years since independence. The economy averaged 8.7 percent growth since 2003, the fastest pace after China among the world's biggest economies.
``We're trying to increase productivity in some areas by at least 50 percent,'' using water management, seeds and fertilizers, Kumar said.
Production of grains such as rice, wheat and lentils has increased just 10 percent since 2000. Food grain harvests rose to a record 230.7 million tons in the year ended June 30 from 209.8 million tons in 2000, according to the farm ministry.
To contact the reporters on this story: Pratik Parija in New Delhi at pparija@bloomberg.net; Thomas Kutty Abraham in Mumbai at tabraham4@bloomberg.net.
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