BUSH BLAMES India for rising food prices not BioFuel....., page 2
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reply posted on 3-5-2008 @ 05:06 PM by West Coast
Originally posted by 123space


wHAT A Bull..t .

timesofindia.indiatimes.com
(visit the link for the full news article)


So, a billion + people do not have a direct impact on global food demand?

A weak dollar also is having a direct impact on food prices, as more and more country's are trying to take advantage of a weak dollar by buying up as much food as they can.

[edit on 3-5-2008 by West Coast]


reply posted on 3-5-2008 @ 07:45 PM by IAF101
The Counter Argument

Indian news papers are making a counter argument to Bush's analysis of the food crisis and basically have echoed my earlier conclusions with numbers.


The Times of India
US eats 5 times more than India per capita

Even as the world spins into a global food crisis, a popular theory — voiced by the likes of US President George W Bush and secretary of state Condoleezza Rice — is that the Chinese and Indians are responsible. The 'logic': due to zooming incomes, they are eating more, causing worldwide shortages. But is that true?

Due to their huge populations, countries like India and China may appear to consume gigantic amounts of food. But the real elephant in the room that nobody is willing to talk about is how much each person gets to eat. And the answer will shock many.

Total foodgrain consumption — wheat, rice, and all coarse grains like rye, barley etc — by each person in the US is over five times that of an Indian, according to figures released by the US Department of Agriculture for 2007.

Each Indian gets to eat about 178 kg of grain in a year, while a US citizen consumes 1,046 kg.

In per capita terms, US grain consumption is twice that of the European Union and thrice that of China. Grain consumption includes flour and by conversion to alcohol.

In fact, per capita grain consumption has increased in the US — so actually the Americans are eating more. In 2003, US per capita grain consumption was 946 kg per year which increased to 1046 kg last year.

By way of comparison, India’s per capita grain consumption has remained static over the same period. It’s not just grains. Milk consumption, in fluid form, is 78 kg per year for each person in the US, compared to 36 kg in India and 11 kg in China.

Vegetable oils consumption per person is 41 kg per year in US, while Indians are making do with just 11 kg per year. These are figures for liquid milk, not for cheese, butter, yogurt and milk powders which are consumed in huge proportion in the more advanced countries.

A significant proportion of India’s population is vegetarian, and so, this is all the food that they get, apart from vegetables and pulses. But the source of carbohydrates and fats is mainly derived from food grains and oils.

As far as meat consumption is concerned, the US leads the world in per capita consumption by a wide margin. Beef consumption, for example, is 42.6 kg per person per year, compared to a mere 1.6 kg in India and 5.9 kg in China. In case you are thinking that perhaps Indians might be going in for chicken, think again. In the US, 45.4 kg poultry meat is consumed every year by each person, compared to just 1.9 kg in India.

Pork consumption is negligible in India, while it is a major item elsewhere. In the European Union, 42.6 kg pork is consumed per person every year, while in the US, 29.7 kgs are consumed. Pork is a staple for Chinese, and so over 35 kg are consumed per person per year. And, we are not talking about various other types of meat, like turkey.

All these comparisons are for powerful economies, whether of the west or the east.

But the story would not be complete without mentioning the plight of Africa, where foodgrain consumption in 2007 was a mere 162 kg per year for each person, or about 445 grams per day. Don’t forget they are not getting any meat or milk products out there.

Perhaps, it is time to include the lifestyle choices of the West in the whole feverish debate on how to tackle the global food crisis.

These figures are collated by the US Department of Agriculture. US per capita grain consumption rose from 946 kg in 2003 to 1046 kg last year. India’s per capita consumption remained static in this period.


I have always maintained that the US consumes more than it should. Now that has come to bite us in the back. Not only is it bad for the global economy it is bad for American who are becoming a race of FAT people.

[edit on 3-5-2008 by IAF101]


reply posted on 5-5-2008 @ 12:36 AM by sc2099
spiegel.de

Not just Presidential rhetoric...



With their huge populations, China and India exert an unparalleled force on world food markets. They are looking abroad as it becomes more difficult for them to be self-sufficient -- and the increasing demand often has disastrous consequences across the globe.





Together, the two Asian nations must feed more than a third of the world's population. In times of exploding food prices, their sheer size alone makes the crisis even worse.To confront this growing problem and because wheat production has stagnated since the turn of the millennium, India has recently decided to develop an additional strategic food reserve. Statisticians have calculated that.Text the demand for food increases by 0.7 percent for each percentage point of Indian growth. According to this calculation, last year alone, when India's per capita growth was about 7.5 percent, the country needed about 5.2 percent more food, especially more expensive non-staple foods..Text The situation is similar in China. Its global purchases of soybeans are a consequence of changes in eating habits. More than half of all soybean production in the world now ends up in China.


Someone called pointing to one of the causes of this crisis a "convenient whipping boy...for failed US policies." In my opinion, it's calling a spade a spade. If President Bush hadn't been astute enough to mention these facts, he would have been called an ignorant boob. But since he did mention them, he's passing the buck.

The fact of the matter is that growth in China and India are part of the cause of the food shortage. And on a somewhat related note, it really sucks to be an outgoing two-term president.




[edit on 5-5-2008 by sc2099]


reply posted on 5-5-2008 @ 10:12 AM by mikesingh
"When we were young kids growing up in America, we were
Told to eat our vegetables at dinner and not leave them.
Mothers said, 'think of the starving children in India
And finish the dinner.'


And now I tell my children:
'Finish your homework. Think of the children in India who would make you starve, if you don't!"

Thomas Friedman


That's because Indian kids are getting smarter. And that's what's going to happen as primary education in America is heading South! (Pun unintended). American jobs would be cornered by the Indians and that's when Americans will begin starving. It's not about Indians eating better diets that's pushing prices.

But that later.

First India and China were blamed last month for the spiraling oil prices. The U.S. government said that their booming economies were responsible for excess consumption leading to the present crises.

Then they were blamed for excess emission of green house gases due to galloping energy requirements leading to global warming.

Now US President George Bush has joined his top diplomat Condoleezza Rice in suggesting that the growing prosperity of India's huge middle class is contributing to rising food prices around the world!

Last week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had said that the improvement in the diets of people in China and India is among the reasons for the skyrocketing prices of grain worldwide. Oh yes! Is it only the Western world that needs good food, energy and a higher standard of living? How dare India and China? And the rest of the world can go to pot!

How naïve can the leaders of America get? Blame India and China for all the woes of the world and the U.S. in particular. They’ve now become the convenient whipping boys. A good pretext to hide the failed policies of the U.S.

Mr Bush, why are you covering up U.S. policy of subsidizing and promoting bio fuels out of crops like corn and soybean? Are you aware that production of biofuel leads to destruction of forests, climate change and reduction of the land area available to grow crops for food?

Put your house in order first, before pointing fingers and blaming others for your failed policies and lack of vision.




reply posted on 5-5-2008 @ 01:20 PM by centurion1211
reply to post by IAF101



Statistical semantics.

India and China together have over 8 times the population of the United States.

Let's do some simple math to see what the net effect is even if the U.S eats 5 times the amount (per capita) that India and China (chindia) do.

to keep the math simpler, lets say that people in the U.S. eat 20 pounds of food each week. That would mean that the people in chindia would eat 4 pounds (1/5).

So, if we multiply 20 pounds of food times the U.S population of 304 million we get 6.080 billion pounds of food for the week.

However, 4 pounds of food times the population of chindia equals 9.820 billion pounds of food.

That means that the global impact of chindia's population is 1.6 times as great as the impact from the U.S.

Which supports my earlier statement that the problem is far too many people in chindia.
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