Are these kids causing a global food shortage?

India reacts to latest Bushism

MUMBAI: Reactions in India ranged from disbelief to irritation following the latest Bush-speak — the US President says the growing prosperity of India’s large middle class is contributing to rising food prices around the world.

“Just as an interesting thought for you, there are 350 million people in India who are classified as middle class. Their middle class is larger than our entire population. And when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food. And so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up,” he said, commenting on the economy during a visit to World Wide Technology in Maryland Heights, Missouri.
 
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had also said last week that apparent improvement in the diets of people in China and India and resultant export caps were among the main causes of skyrocketing prices of grain worldwide.

Experts dispute the claim, pointing out that dietary patterns had not changed that much in India. Ashok Gulati, director of the International Food Policy Research Institute, told DNA: “As people get richer, they eat more meat and some grain goes to feed the animals for meat. But this is not happening so much in India, where few people eat beef or pork.”

Devinder Sharma, a food policy analyst, says Bush had his facts wrong. “He says Indians are eating more, whereas average food consumption in India is as low as at the time of the Bengal famine —  150 grams a day per person.”  

Earlier, in an interview in Washington, India’s finance minister, P Chidambaram, had blamed the US diversion of crop land for bio-fuel as the primary reason for the food shortage: ‘When millions of people are going hungry, it’s a crime against humanity that food should be diverted to biofuel,’ he said.

But Bush would not agree that America’s new-found love for corn-based ethanol was causing the prices of food to go up. ‘As you know, I’m an ethanol person,’ he said. ‘I believe, as I told you, the interim step to getting away from oil and gas is to go to ethanol and battery technologies for your automobiles. I think it makes sense for America to be growing energy. I’d much rather be paying our farmers when we go to the gas pump than paying some nation that may not like us.’

But even within the US there is a strong backlash against Bush’s ethanol policy. ‘Why are we putting food in our gas tanks instead of our stomachs,’ asked Rich Reinwald, owner of Reinwald’s Bakery and First Vice President of the Retail Bakers of America, in testimony before the Congressional Joint Economic Committee.