https://arab.news/2rc5w
MUMBAI: Global rice prices, now at their highest in 11 years, are set to rally further after India moved to boost payments to farmers, just as El Nino threatens yields in key producers and alternative staples get costlier for poor Asians and Africans.
India accounts for more than 40 percent of world rice exports, which were 56 million tons in 2022, but low inventories mean any cut in shipments will fuel food prices driven up by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year and erratic weather.
“India was the cheapest supplier of rice,” B.V. Krishna Rao, president of the Rice Exporters Association (REA), told Reuters. “As Indian prices moved up because of the new minimum support price, other suppliers also started raising prices.”
Rice is a staple for more than 3 billion people and nearly 90 percent of the water-intensive crop is produced in Asia, where the El Nino weather pattern usually brings lower rainfall.
Yet even before the weather phenomenon can disrupt production, the global rice price index of the Food and Agriculture Organization hovers above an 11-year high.
That comes despite a forecast by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) for near-record output in all top six global producers — Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.
“The impact of El Nino is not restricted to any single country; it affects rice output in almost all producing countries,” said Nitin Gupta, vice president of Olam India’s rice business.
The price of Indian rice exports has jumped 9 percent to a five-year high, following a hike of 7 percent last month in the price the government pays farmers for new-season common rice.
Export prices in Thailand and Vietnam have risen to more than two-year highs since that incentive, aimed at luring the votes of farmers in key Indian state elections this year and a general election next year.
In recent months, the prices of sugar, meat and eggs have jumped to multi-year highs worldwide, after producers cut exports to rein in domestic costs.
Despite the forecast for a strong Asian crop, some global trading houses expect El Nino to crimp the output of all key rice producers.
“Rice prices have already been rising due to limited supplies,” added Olam’s Gupta. “If production decreases, there will be a rally in prices.”
Global inventories of rice are set to drop to a six-year low of 170.2 million tons by the end of 2023/24, as stocks fall in top producers China and India, the USDA says, after the rising demand of recent years.
Prices could rice by a fifth
Prices could rise a fifth or more if yields drop sharply, as El Nino means the second rice crop in almost all Asian nations will be lower than normal, said a New Delhi-based grains dealer with a global trading house.
No. 2 exporter Thailand has urged farmers to plant only one rice crop after May rainfall was 26 percent below normal.
In India, which plants its second crop in November, planting of summer-sown rice was down 26 percent from a year ago by Friday, as the monsoon brought 8 percent less rain than normal, government data show.
Weather in China, the top producer of the grain, has not been conducive for the early season crop but high stockpiles will balance supply and demand, said Rosa Wang, an analyst with Shanghai JC Intelligence.
Food inflation is always a concern for India’s ruling party, which banned wheat exports last year and curbed those of rice and sugar to bring down prices.
As elections near, the slow start of planting amid rising domestic prices is a concern for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), raising the prospect that it could further curb exports.
“The Modi government is grappling with the task of containing the price rise in wheat, which is why it would not hesitate to impose restrictions,” said the dealer based in New Delhi, the Indian capital.
Indian curbs would leave other countries struggling to make up supplies, industry officials say.
“The supply situation is extremely tight, and decrease in Indian exports could potentially cause global prices to surge,” said a Singapore-based dealer with a global trading house.
Taken together, Myanmar, Pakistan, Thailand and Vietnam could raise exports by 3 million to 4 million metric tons, the dealer added.
The price surge also complicates the task of building up stockpiles.
Demand from price-sensitive African countries has slowed, said Himanshu Agarwal, executive director at Satyam Balajee, an Indian exporter.
But some Asian buyers, such as Indonesia and the Philippines, have been building stocks and increasing purchases from traditional supplier Vietnam.
Last month Indonesia signed a rare pact with India to import 1 million tons if El Nino disrupts domestic supply. Indonesia usually buys rice from nearby Thailand and Vietnam.
“Rice has been a buyers’ market for the past few years, but it could become a sellers’ market if El Nino cuts production,” said the Singapore-based dealer.
BEIJING: Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen arrived in Beijing on Thursday for meetings with Chinese leaders as part of efforts to revive relations that are strained by disputes about security, technology and other irritants.
Yellen planned to focus on stabilizing the global economy and challenging Chinese support of Russia during its invasion of Ukraine, Treasury officials in Washington told reporters ahead of the trip.
The secretary was due to meet with Chinese officials, American businesspeople and members of the public, according to Treasury officials. They gave no details, but said Yellen wouldn’t meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Yellen follows Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met Xi last month in the highest-level US visit to Beijing in five years. The two agreed to stabilize relations but failed to agree on improving communications between their militaries.
Yellen earlier warned against economic decoupling, or disconnecting US and Chinese industry and markets. Businesspeople have warned the world might split into separate markets, slowing innovation and economic growth, as both governments tighten controls on trade in technology and other goods deemed sensitive.
Yellen said earlier the two governments “can and need to find a way to live together” in spite of their strained relations over geopolitics and economic development.
The most recent flareup came after President Joe Biden referred to Xi as dictator. The Chinese protested, but Biden said his blunt statements about China are “just not something I’m going to change very much.”
Relations have been strained by disputes over technology, security, China’s assertive policy abroad and conflicting claims to the South China Sea and other territory.
Washington has tightened restrictions imposed by Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, on Chinese access to processor chips and other US technology on security grounds.
Ties became especially testy after a Chinese surveillance balloon flew over the United States in February and was shot down.
This week, Beijing responded to US technology controls by announced unspecified curbs on exports of gallium and germanium, two metals used in making semiconductors, solar panels, missiles and radar.
MINSK: Russia’s mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin is in St. Petersburg and his Wagner troops have remained at the camps where they had stayed before an abortive mutiny, the president of Belarus said Thursday.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko helped broker a deal for Prigozhin to his rebellion on June 24 in exchange for security guarantees for himself and his soldiers and permission to move to Belarus.
After saying last week that Prigozhin was in Belarus, Lukashenko told international reporters Thursday that the mercenary chief is in St. Petersburg and Wagner troops still were at their camps.
He did not specify the location of the camps, but Prigozhin’s mercenaries fought alongside Russian forces in Ukraine before their revolt.
The rebellion saw them quickly sweep over the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and capture military headquarters there before marching on the Russian capital in what Prigozhin described as a “march of justice” to oust the Russian defense minister and the General Staff chief.
Prigozhin claimed his troops had come within 200 kilometers (124 miles) of Moscow when he ordered them to stop the advance under the deal brokered by Lukashenko.
The abortive rebellion represented the biggest threat to Russian President Vladimir Putin in his more than two decades in power and exposed the Kremlin’s weakness.
Lukashenko’s statement followed Russian media reports that claimed that Prigozhin was spotted in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city. His presence was seen as part of agreements that allowed him to finalize his affairs there.
ATHENS: Since Matloob Hussain from Pakistan went missing during a deadly shipwreck off Greece last month, his brother Adil has left the door of his Athens home open in the hope he appears. It will stay open until his body is found.
Matloob, 43, is among hundreds of migrants from Pakistan, Syria and Egypt who are presumed dead after their overcrowded fishing trawler, that set sail from Libya for Italy, sank off the coast of Pylos in international waters on June 14.
A total of 104 men were rescued and 82 bodies were found. But with survivor accounts suggesting as many as 750 people were on board, several families are calling on authorities to raise the wreck from the seabed and recover the bodies of scores believed to have been trapped in the hold.
“They must take out the people who are inside. If they are dead, take them out,” Adil Hussain said, urging Greece to hire a vessel to recover them.
“We will sell our houses, we will borrow money, if the state can’t. Just give me the body.”
Greek government officials said last month that the chances of retrieving the vessel were slim due to the depth — around 5,000 meters — to which it sank.
Hussain said his brother was crammed with others below deck in the boat’s refrigerator, according to a survivor who recognized him.
“All of us — my mother, my father, my brother’s wife — we want to know, is he dead or alive? If we don’t find his body, we’ll leave the door open for the rest of our lives,” he said through tears.
“I will wait in Greece for my brother.”
Hussain has worked as a gardener in the country since 2007 after a perilous journey of his own via Turkiye.
Lawyers representing families of the missing plan on Thursday to ask judicial authorities investigating the case for the boat to be retrieved.
“It is a fundamental obligation toward the victims who are at the bottom of the sea, an obligation toward their families, and of the families toward their loved ones,” Takis Zotos, a lawyer representing four Pakistani families, told Reuters.
Lamenting a lack of interest in the wreck compared to the expensive rescue operation launched for the missing Titanic submersible and its billionaire passengers that drew huge global attention, Zotos said the contrast was “grotesque.”
“If we compare people as units, we are talking about five compared to 600,” he said.
“But they are the wretched of the earth down there. They also had the misfortune of being shipwrecked in the deepest part of the Mediterranean.”
Debris from the Titanic submersible was found by a robotic deep-sea diving vehicle that was sent to scour the Atlantic ocean floor more than 3,000 meters below the surface. Last week presumed human remains were found and recovered from the ocean bottom.
Wait for identification
Matloob was the first of the two brothers to migrate to Greece in 2005 but after living undocumented for years, he returned to Pakistan two years ago. He struggled to get by and decided to leave again, this time for Italy, borrowing $7,000 from friends to pay for the trip.
Hussain urges his family not to come illegally, even when they tell him they have no food or work in Pakistan.
“I say it’s better — you’re alive. If you come this way, you will die. And if you die, everyone dies.”
So far, around 350 DNA samples have been collected from relatives in Greece or sent from abroad, most from Pakistan, a senior official involved in the process told Reuters.
Just over 20 bodies out of 82 have been identified so far, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as the investigation is confidential under Greek law.
The Greek government was not immediately available for comment on the progress of the identification process.
The causes of the shipwreck are still being investigated. Survivors have said that the ship capsized after a disastrous towing attempt by the Greek coast guard, which Greece denies.
Three weeks since the boat sank, the search operation is now being conducted mainly by commercial vessels asked by Greek authorities to monitor the area, a coast guard official said.
The bodies of the victims remain in refrigerators, the chief coroner told Reuters. Hussain is still waiting to hear if his DNA is a match.
Alam Shinwari, an official at Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) said Pakistan last week sent to Greece over 200 DNA samples from family members and more would be collected. Pakistan has also sent fingerprints.
A spokeswoman for Pakistan’s Foreign Office, Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, said bodies would be transported to Pakistan upon verification and release by the Greek authorities.
Muhammad Ayub, 55, whose brother Muhammad Yasin, 28, was on the vessel, said he was hoping his brother’s body would be identified after his two young children gave DNA.
“At least we may know his fate or get his body back, so we can tell these kids that your father was in an accident, this is his grave,” he said.
BRUSSELS: Senior officials from Sweden and Turkiye will gather at NATO headquarters on Thursday to examine Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s objections to the Nordic country joining the military alliance and to see what more, if anything, can be done to break the deadlock.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg will lead the meeting, which will involve the countries’ foreign ministers, intelligence chiefs and national security advisers. Top officials from Finland, which joined NATO in April after itself addressing Turkish concerns, will also take part.
Fearing for their security, Sweden and neighboring Finland ended their longstanding policy of military nonalignment after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and both applied for NATO membership.
President Joe Biden welcomed Sweden’s prime minister to the White House on Wednesday in a show of solidarity as the United States ramped up pressure for the Nordic nation’s entry into NATO ahead of the alliance’s two-day summit starting next Tuesday.
Only Turkiye and Hungary are delaying Sweden’s membership. The other 29 allies, Stoltenberg and Sweden have all said the Nordic country has done enough to satisfy Turkiye’s demands. Sweden has changed its anti-terror laws and lifted an arms embargo on Turkiye, among other concessions.
But Turkiye accuses Sweden of being too lenient toward groups that Ankara says pose a security threat, including militant Kurdish groups and people associated with a 2016 coup attempt. NATO requires the unanimous approval of all 31 members to expand.
Turkiye’s foreign ministry said the sides would review steps Finland and Sweden took, especially in the context of fighting terrorism, since the last meeting, which was held in Ankara on June 14.
Foreign minister Hakan Fidan would be joined at the meetings by Erdogan’s chief adviser Akif Cagatay Kilic, deputy foreign minister Burak Akcapar and the intelligence chief, Ibrahim Kalin, according to the ministry’s statement.
Hungary is also holding up approval of Sweden’s candidacy but has never clearly stated publicly what its concerns are. NATO officials expect that Hungary will follow suit once Turkiye lifts its objections.
At a European Union summit last week, Swedish prime minister Ulf Kristersson said Hungary had given assurances that it would not hold things up. “Twice, I have spoken to Prime Minister (Viktor) Orban,” Kristersson told reporters. “Both times he has confirmed that Hungary will not delay.”
Turkiye is a different matter. A Qur’an-burning protest, at which the media vastly outnumbered the participants, outside a mosque in Stockholm has fueled tensions. Erdogan criticized Sweden last week for allowing it. Police permitted the protest citing freedom of speech after a court overturned a ban on a similar burning of the Muslim holy book.
It’s unclear exactly what Turkiye objects to, and Thursday’s meeting is designed to flesh that out. Erdogan railed against Sweden while on the campaign trail for elections in May, and NATO officials had expected him to relent after he was reelected.
Erdogan is also seeking upgraded F-16 fighter jets from the US, but Biden has suggested that Sweden’s membership should be endorsed first.
NATO had hoped the road to Sweden’s membership would be smoothed out before the July 11-12 summit in Lithuania. Sweden’s entry would be a symbolically powerful moment and the latest indication that Russia’s war is driving countries to join the alliance. Those hopes have dimmed.
SAO PAULO: As the number of Muslims in Latin America increases and Islamic communities gain visibility, more and more cases of Islamophobia are being reported in the region. Community leaders, most of them women, are striving to tackle the issue.
With a Muslim population estimated at between 800,000 and 1.5 million, Brazil is the only nation in Latin America where a comprehensive study on Islamophobia has been conducted.
The issue has been in the spotlight after a copy of the holy Qur’an was burned on June 28 outside Stockholm’s central mosque in an offensive act tolerated by the authorities in Sweden. Although South America has not witnessed such crude display of intolerance, Islamophia is believed to exist just under the surface in many countries.
Led by anthropologist Francirosy Barbosa, a professor at the University of Sao Paulo and herself a Muslim convert, the research involved a survey of 653 Muslims that showed most of them having already suffered some kind of Islamophobia.
“Women were the majority of the respondents, something that already demonstrates that they’re the ones who suffer the most,” Barbosa told Arab News.
About 54 percent of the men who took part in the study — both those born to Islam and converts — said they have faced some sort of embarrassment due to their religion. Most cases happened on the street, in the workplace or at school.
The proportions are higher among women, with 66 percent of those born to Islam reporting that they have been offended or attacked due to their faith, and 83 percent of converts reporting the same.
Many incidents involve subtle comments and jokes, like a work colleague who discovers that somebody in the office is Muslim and begins to call him or her a “suicide bomber,” or a person who insists that her friend should not wear a headscarf because it is a symbol of male domination.
But the study also reports serious cases of physical violence, such as an unknown attacker spraying insecticide in the eyes of a woman wearing a hijab, and a girl who left her mosque and was hit by a man on the street.
Female converts “are the major victims of Islamophobia because they’re more vulnerable. Many of them come from poor neighborhoods and have to use public transportation,” Barbosa said.
Female converts also have to deal with pressures from their own families. The result is that many of them give up wearing a headscarf after being attacked, something “that brings suffering because they feel they’re failing to attend a divine commandment,” Barbosa said.
She added that Islamophobia grew in Brazil under former President Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022), when different anti-Muslim groups became more powerful.
“In that period, there was a boom in pro-Zionist evangelical churches, for instance,” she said. The survey’s respondents said evangelical Christians are the religious segment that discriminates against them the most.
Barbosa was invited earlier this year to take part in a workshop organized by the Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship to discuss hate speech.
Her study on Islamophobia was presented to the group and will be part of its final report, which will orientate the government’s policies to combat intolerance.
“In our research, we included some guidelines for the struggle against Islamophobia, like the need to invest in education about religions and Islam. Now, those suggestions may finally come to light with the new government (of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva),” Barbosa said.
In Argentina, activists against Islamophobia have been counting on partnerships with governmental institutions as well.
In 2022, Islam para la Paz (Islam for Peace) celebrated a deal with the National Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism — known by the Spanish acronym INADI — with the goal of promoting cooperation against religious discrimination.
Melody Amal Khalil Kabalan, who heads Islam para la Paz, said many press outlets were spreading misinformation about Qatar when it hosted the FIFA World Cup last year, so her organization and INADI promoted a workshop on the country for journalists.
“This year, we’ll organize a program called School without Discrimination, which will include workshops about Islamic habits for students,” she told Arab News.
While Islamophobia in Argentina is not comparable to what happens in European nations, there has been a growing number of cases lately, she said. Most cases involve women, like in Brazil.
“In a notorious incident, a woman was forbidden to get into a swimming pool in (the city of) Mendoza wearing her burkini,” Khalil said.
“In other cases, women were impeded by government officials to take pictures for documents wearing a hijab, which is their right.”
Victims of Islamophobia can report incidents to INADI, but many fail to do so “because they think the authorities won’t defend Muslims as they defend other groups,” Khalil said.
“We realized that this perception is connected to the fact that our communities aren’t so organized to resist discrimination as other communities in Argentina.”
She said it is up to Muslims to inform and educate Argentinian society about their needs and specificities.
“We have a responsibility to tell people about our way of life. It’s not only a problem for the government,” she added.
Islam para la Paz recently created an observatory of Muslim issues and is gathering information on the communities’ problems.
In Colombia, a group of women led by Maria Jose Acevedo Garcia established five years ago the Islamic Foundation Assalam of Colombian Muslim Women, whose goal is to protect Muslim women and prevent Islamophobia.
She said the most common incidents involve discrimination at school, the workplace and in government agencies.
“Women at times are discriminated against for wearing a hijab at work. In those cases, I send a letter to the person in charge and schedule a visit to the company in order to inform people about Islam,” Acevedo told Arab News.
Raised in a Catholic family, she converted to Islam 20 years ago. At first, she would commonly hear offensive comments and get angry, but over time she “learned how to react calmly and educate people.”
She said: “Assalam frequently visits schools and universities to offer workshops against discrimination. That’s the only way to change things.”
Acevedo added that during crises in Muslim nations — such as the war in Syria and the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan — Islamophobia usually increases.
“We still haven’t experienced a great number of physical attacks, but incidents in which people tried to take off the hijab of a woman on public transportation have already been reported,” she said.
Assalam recently met with governmental authorities in order to present to them the needs of Muslim women in Colombia.
Problems commonly arise at the airport, for instance, when women coming from Muslim nations are told to take off the headscarf during inspection.
Acevedo expressed hope that more government employees will understand the nature of Islam in the future.
In Mexico, where the Muslim community has been growing over the past years, Islamophobia is noticeable in the arts, books and the news, where “negative expressions are commonly employed when it comes to Islam,” anthropologist Samantha Leyva Cortes told Arab News.
In her studies about Muslim communities in Mexico City and San Cristobal de las Casas, Leyva was told by many women that they are treated as foreigners due to their hijab.
“Shopkeepers frequently assume they aren’t from Mexico and charge them more than they should for a product,” she said.
Women wearing headscarves have to face all kinds of sexist remarks on the street and on public transportation, Leyva said.
“People generally think they’re passive, disenfranchised women. They don’t consider that wearing a hijab is their choice,” she added.
But the younger generations have been opening new paths lately. Many Muslim women are expanding their presence on social media and making themselves visible in the public arena.
“Many conversions have been happening online, so the internet is an important space for them,” Leyva said.
Barbosa said most Muslim leaders have been dealing with Islamophobia inadequately. “In general, they’re concerned only about spreading the religion and think that talking about discrimination and violence is something negative that can raise more problems,” she added.
Her goal now is to apply the same survey in other Latin American countries so the problem of Islamophobia in the whole region will be known, and communities and governments will be able to act.