November 3, 2007 (LPAC)-- "Pasta Shortages on the Shelves" is the headline of a Figaro article on Oct. 31. Days after Jacques Cheminade's warnings that inventories would run out due to massive speculation, the paper reports that in certain regions of France, several large supermarkets--Leclerc, Intermarche and Casino--no longer offer ordinary pasta to their customers.

"Will pasta become a luxury item?" asks Le Figaro "This food product, consumed on average of three times a week by the French, is suffering from the shortage of hard wheat, the essential raw material that goes into its production."

Inverting cause and effect, the author says, "As a result: In four months, the price of wheat has nearly tripled, going from 170 euros to close to 500 euros a ton. Enough to provoke a mini-earthquake in this sector." The paper blames bad harvests in the wheat-growing countries, and says, "the situation is not going to get better before the next planned harvest in June."

Examining the commercial shock among distributors, Figaro notes that Italian pasta makers such as Panzani and Barilla succeeded in negotiating respectively 21% and 20% price hikes with distributors, but their losses remain substantial. To such extent that the Barilla family, according to a source close to the family, fired its director general, Gian Luca Bolla for "mismanagement of the problematic primary material."