ITALY says its bulging rice stores could be used soon to feed the hungry in Ethiopia and Eritrea. Italy is the European Union’s biggest rice producer by far. Italian rice millers have urged Brussels to send its huge costly intervention stocks to feed the world’s hungry. The Pavia-based Italian Rice Millers’ Association (AIRI) has said European farmers, struggling to compete against low-cost producers in the United States and Asia, were ploughing increasing quantities of rice into intervention. – Reuters