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agriculture tractor Despite mounting pressure from various quarters, the State Bank of India has decided to continue with

its decision to freeze loans to farmers on farm equipment — tractor, combined harvester and power tiller. SBI chairman OP

Bhatt said the bank will start giving loans to farmers for agriculture activities once the non-performing assets (NPAs) of

the bank comes down. SBI is trying to use the government's farm loan waiver schemes to cut its NPAs. Bhatt said, “It is our

attempt to sensitise our branches to help farmers take advantage of government's scheme and reduce NPAs of the bank.” Under

government's scheme, if farmers pay 75% of the loan outstanding, the remaining 25% would be provided by the Centre as debt

relief. The statement added that the bank has ambitious plans to strengthen its agri and rural loan portfolios and has

targeted a 33% growth in agri advances, amounting to Rs 13,400 crore during 2008-09. “State Bank wishes to assure the

farming community of the country that its commitment to agri and rural development remains undiminished,” Bhatt said.

Meanwhile, Tractor Manufacturers' Association (TMA) on Tuesday asked the government to persuade SBI against freezing loans

for farm equpiment, saying such a decision would harm the agriculture sector. The association demanded that government should

intervene and ask the bank to withdraw its decision of suspending new loans for buying tractors and other utility products.

It said the bank's decision would eventually hit the agriculture growth as food grain production would come to a standstill

for lack of tractors and other equipment. (Editor: Emily)

Biscuit Processing Machinery Designed to automatically place singular 3D objects into robag? 3 VFFS packaging equipment,

system eliminates missed inserts and manual labor. Insert thickness range from 5 to 110 x 35 mm in any direction with weight

capacity up to 25 g. Inserter reduces number of multiple inserts at speeds of 100 bpm and provides emergency shutoff to

protect machinery in case of required shutdown. Unit can be added to most existing robag? 3 rotary jaw machines on site.

Dasseldorf, Germany Trade Fair Center, 24-30 April 2008, Hall 17, stand A28tna's inserter system offers 0% missed inserts,

doubles manual speeds DUSSELDORF, GERMANY (April 24-30, 2008)-tna, leading supplier of packaging and processing solutions for

food production companies worldwide, unveils new automatic inserter technology at Interpack. tna's inserter is designed to

automatically place singular 3D objects into tna's robag? 3 vertical form, fill and seal (VFFS) packaging equipment,

completely eliminating missed inserts and manual labor. Operation is simple. The operator selects a set up a program on the

system's existing touch key pad to run the tna robag? 3 with inserters. tna's inserter system is so accurate, it offers 0%

missed inserts, and reduces the number of multiple inserts dramatically at inserting speeds of 100 bpm, doubling manual

speeds 40-50 bpm. The system provides an emergency shut off to protect machinery if a shutdown is required. (Editor: Emily)

Looking for a healthy, additive-free substitute for potato chips? Put Brothers-All-Natural Crisps on your list. The company,

whose snacks are avail- able at many retailers and online, offers freeze-dried fruit and potato snacks, fresh onion. Fruit

choices include white and yellow peach, Fuji apple, Asian pear, strawberry, pineapple, banana and strawberry-banana crisps,

all made with no added sugar or preservatives. Potato crisps have no added oils, preservatives or Olestra, just sliced

potatoes, fresh ingredients and sea salt. Flavors include original with sea salt, black pepper and sea salt, Szechuan pepper

and fresh chives and fresh onion and garlic. Crisps are fat-free and preservative-free; contain no peanuts, tree nuts,

gluten, soy or dairy; are not genetically modified or engineered; and are vegan and kosher. Single-serving bags have a

suggested retail price of $.75 to $1.19.

Beijing is going to have to do more to curb inflation, perhaps at the price of reducing growth and employment. The Chinese

National Bureau of Statistics said Monday that the consumer price index rose 8.5% in April compared to the same month last

year, up from 8.3% in March. Surging food costs were the major contributor, rising 22.1% year-on-year in April. Non-food

prices were only up 1.8%, which should provide some comfort given the global spike in the prices of oil and minerals. Meat

and poultry prices were up 47.9%, 2.1 percentage points higher than the 45.8% increase recorded in March; seafood products

were up 16.1%; fresh vegetable prices climbed 13.6%; and Fresh Vegetable costs rose 12.1%. The increase in grain prices was

in line with international markets, mounting 7.4% in April, and egg prices were up 3.6%. High food prices are of particular

worry to the government as they hit the country's poorest the hardest, threatening to stoke unrest. The CPI for 2007 was

4.8%, far below the current pace but also far above the government's annual target of 3%. Earlier in the year. officials had

said they were confident that they could hold inflation to 4.8% in 2008. For the first four months of the year, the CPI was

up 8.2%. At a forum held over the weekend in Shanghai, Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the People's Bank of China, said

taming inflation is China's paramount concern. "There is no cure-all medicine, and we have to make the final decisions,"

China Daily quoted Zhou as saying. To fight inflation and deflate asset price bubbles, Beijing has raised interest rates and

reserve requirements multiple times over the last 18 months and announced sharp new limits on bank lending.

Spring weather may be just starting in parts of Canada, but the season is well under way in France, a country that is in full

bloom come May Fish Powder. "Everyone feels lighter in the spring," says Odile Jouanneau, the Paris-born-and-raised wife of

Daniel Jouanneau, the French ambassador posted to Canada in September 2004. We turned to Jouanneau and chefs at the French

embassy in Ottawa for their take on traditional, lighter fare to celebrate the season. There, chef de cuisine Jose Moniz and

pastry chef Gilles Gourdet created this selection of French favourites. "We wanted to keep spring in mind with a menu that is

as light as possible," says Moniz. Jouanneau is especially pleased with the Rice Cake with Maple Syrup - a Canadian twist on

French comfort food. "When Gilles proposed this rice cake, I said, 'Oh, that's my childhood,' " she says. "It's a very family

dessert, and very French."

Tempura embodies qualities Japanese cooks hold dear: fresh ingredients, precision cooking and beautiful presentation. It also

exemplifies the uncanny ability of the Japanese to absorb outside influences -- in this case from the Iberian Peninsula --

and mold them into new constructs that are very much their own Dehydrated Garlic Powder. The idea of frying fish and seafood

in a light batter came to Japan with Jesuit missionaries in the 16th century. These learned and zealous men were the

evangelical arm of the Portuguese crown in Asia. They arrived in Japan in 1549 after the wreck of a Portuguese ship along the

coast of Kyushu, Japan's most southwesterly island. Led at first by Francis Xavier, who was born in Navarre, Spain, the

Jesuits gained Japanese converts to Christianity even in the upper echelons of the nobility (daimyo) and the samurai warrior

class. They also managed to secure a stronghold in Nagasaki, which became the hub of Japanese trade with Portugal. Naturally,

as the Jesuits came into contact with all levels of Japanese society, their influence extended beyond religion to other

aspects of Western culture such as technology and science and even cooking. In the book "Japan: Its History and Culture"

(MacGraw-Hill, 2005), historian W. Scott Morton writes that by 1569 there were about 300,000 Christian converts in Japan and

that linguistic borrowings from this period include the Portuguese words for bread ("pan," from the Portuguese "pao") and

tempura "for fried shrimp in batter, derived from the fact that on Ember Days, "quattour tempora" days of fasting and

abstinence, the Jesuit fathers ate only seafood."