Rising Income to pressure food supply

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Monday that the Rising prosperity will increasingly put pressure on food supply in India and the country urgently needs to boost farm productivity.
After last year's failed monsoon rains, food prices have jumped in India, one of the world's top consumers of sugar, wheat, edible oils, rice and lentils, triggering protests in poorer regions and putting pressure on authorities to tighten monetary supply. Singh told a meeting of top bureaucrats from Indian states that the country needed to increase farm productivity as food supply was an area of concern.
Last year, sugar prices in India doubled in step with global prices and forced India to import large quantities to have the free flow of supply.He urged state governments to take steps to boost food output and tackle shortages of essential commodities.India's consumption of items such as sugar, wheat, vegetable oils and lentils has increased steadily as the world's third-largest economy expanded rapidly. The Reserve Bank of India last week lifted its wholesale price index inflation forecast for the end of the fiscal year in March to 8.5 per cent from 6.5 per cent and upgraded its economic growth forecast for 2009/10 to 7.5 per cent from 6 per cent, predicting a similar rate of growth the following year. It said it expected inflation to moderate from July, assuming a normal monsoon and steady oil prices