A change in diet and a growing population have led to high prices across China.
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Inflation in China has hit a 12-year high. Food prices have been the main culprit in boosting the latest figures and the central bank is considering higher interest rates.
Presenter - Karon Snowdon Speaker - Jamie Campbell, from CMC Markets; Ben Simpfendorfer, Royal Bank of Scotland in Hong Kong
There are 1.3 billion people in China and they are now eating twice as much meat as they did in 1990. The demand for more meat is staggering but so too is the increase in grain production to feed extra livestock. Two studies being released today indicate the days of cheap food are coming to an end, with a range of factors conspiring to transform food production and markets on a global scale.
Presenter - Simon Lauder Speaker - Executive Director of the Australian Farm Institute, Mick Keogh; International Food Policy Research Institute report author Joachim von Braun.
Steep rises in China's food prices are fuelling expections of yet another interest rate rise. If that goes ahead, it will be the sixth rate rise this year, as the Chinese government desperately seeks to prevent the economy from overheating. In the past year, the price of pork has gone up by more than 50 percent; vegetables are up by nearly a third and the cost of food oil has leapt by 34 percent.
Beijing has issued a tempory ban on one-off food discounts, after the French retailer Carrefour offered cut-price cooking oil, causing a stampede in the southwestern city of Chongqing, in which 3 people died. Premier Wen Jiabao's already held an urgent meeting of the State Council to discuss measures to stabilise food prices, amid warnings the high prices are almost certainly here to stay.
Presenter - Xiaoning Mo Speaker - Professor Jonathan Unger, director of the Contemporary China Centre at the Australian National University; Professor Zhang Jun, director of China Centre for Economic Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai.
The Chinese government has frozen the prices of some goods and services in an effort to limit rising inflation. Last month's inflation figure of 6.5 per cent was the highest in a decade, prompting the Central Bank to increase interest rates for the fifth time this year. The latest price freeze is a sign of the nervousness in Beijing, as pressure builds for higher wages to help offset the rising cost of living.
