'Indian Diet Behind Food Crisis'
Posted on: Friday, 2 May 2008, 00:00 CDT
By Chidanand Rajghatta
WASHINGTON: Improving diets in China and India are among the reasons for the skyrocketing price of food grains worldwide, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice has said, adding fuel to the raging debate over perceived food shortage that has led some American media analysts to recommend stockpiling supplies.
In remarks at a Peace Corps conference on Monday, Rice acknowledged that the world food situation was cause for serious concern to the extent, she said, that Josette Sheeran, her former aide who now works as the Director of the World Food Program, had described it as a "silent tsunami".
Rice attributed four reasons for the rising prices, including distribution issues, escalating oil prices and the "unintended consequence of the alternate fuels effort".
But it was her critique about consumption pattern in China and India and the consequent cap on their exports, and her promise to "have a look at" it, that raised eyebrows. US ally Japan, which is also a major food importing country, has also criticized the ban on food exports by some countries and promised to take it up at the WTO.
"We obviously have to look at places where production seems to be declining and declining to the point that people are actually putting export caps on the amount of food. Now, some of that is not so much declining production as apparently improvement in the diets of people, for instance, in China and India, and then pressures to keep food inside the country. So, that's another element that we have to look at," Rice said.
Rice said the while the US believed bio fuels continue to be an extremely important piece of the alternative energy picture, it wanted to make sure that it's not having an adverse effect. "We think that it's not a large part of the problem, but it may, in fact, be a part of the problem," she said.
Although many experts point to the US and European diversion of food crops to bio-fuel activity as the principle trigger for shortages, there has also been muted criticism in some circles about India and China curtailing the export of their domestic food production (mainly rice) to meet any possible panic at home, leading to tightening of supplies in the international market.
But while there have been stray stories of food riots in countries such as Haiti and Egypt, it is the US where there has been a great deal of agitation.
Critics, who contend that knee-jerk panic and paranoia has long been an American trait, have more evidence to chew on.
Twice in the past week, media outlets have suggestively raised the specter - or need - for Americans to stockpile food in the face of rising prices and possible shortages. In a country where supermarket shelves are often cleared at the first intimation of a few inches of snow or a low-grade hurricane, it is yet another call to hoarding.
It began with a Wall Street Journal article last week that shocked many people by outright recommending that Americans start hoarding food to beat the price rise.
"I don't want to alarm anybody, but maybe it's time for Americans to start stockpiling food. No, this is not a drill," wrote columnist Brett Arendts. "Food prices are already rising here much faster than the returns you are likely to get from keeping your money in a bank or money-market fund. And there are very good reasons to believe prices on the shelves are about to start rising a lot faster..."
"Load up the pantry," Arendts quoted Manu Daftary, one of Wall Street's top investors and the manager of the Quaker Strategic Growth mutual fund, as saying.
"I think prices are going higher. People are too complacent. They think it isn't going to happen here. But I don't know how the food companies can absorb higher costs."
On Tuesday, ABC News echoed the call with a story headlined "Time to stockpile food?" that professed to be a "A Guide to Preparing for Rising Food Costs or That Next Big Emergency". With the visual of a 1955 H-bomb shelter, the story suggested that "maybe it's time to clean out that old Cold War-era bunker and stockpile your favourite treats.
Just move those gas masks to the side and start stacking up the canned string beans."
Rising gas prices has been a staple American complaint for several months now. But mounting grocery bills are now the focus in a country which has long thrived on cheap food.
(c) 2008 The Times of India. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
Source: The Times of India
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User Comments (1)
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Posted by Manish Singh on 05/03/2008, 04:13 This is not an impulsive reaction of Ms Rice towards the rising price of Food grains, instead this is a part of a preplanned stratergy to restrict the India and China from organic cultivation of native herbs for traditional or alternative medicine which is in great demand in that part of hemisphere.Ms Rice is advocating for the pharma loby of her country. |
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