Global food risk from China-Russia pincer

Underlying supply issues could seriously light an inflationary fire: ``World food supplies are caught in a pincer as China becomes a net importer of corn for the first time in modern history and Russia's drought inflicts even more damage than expected, raising the risk of a global grain shock in 2011... "We had hoped things would calm down by September, but they haven't: more commodities are joining in," said Abdolreza Abbassanian, grain chief at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation. '' (Note that this piece is written by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard so it has a "deflationist" perspective).