Indo-Asian News Service
Washington: US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice considers apparent improvement in the diets of people in China and India and resultant export caps among the reasons for the skyrocketing prices of grain worldwide.
She also believes a successful Doha round of world trade talks, would help bring down the agricultural subsidies by developed countries and give farmers greater access to market, thereby solving the problem.
“The US is very concerned about the status of the food situation in the world", she said at the Peace Corps 2008 Worldwide Country Director Conference .
"But the exchange rate, plus the inability to get food to market, or food to people has made it very difficult," she said.
In certain areas, an incredible rise in fuel prices is hiking the cost of everything from fertiliser to transportation. Use of biofuels in food crop areas and an apparent decline in production in some places are leading to export caps.
"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," Rice said.
In addition "while biofuels continue to be an extremely important piece of the alternative energy picture, obviously, we want to make sure that it's not having an adverse effect," she said.
"We think that it's not a large part of the problem, but it may, in fact, be a part of the problem," she added.
White House press secretary Dana Perino acknowledged, "There are many different factors contributing to the food crises around the world. One of them, would be biofuels."
"But the bigger problems in regard to the food crises around the world is, one, the cost of energy, and especially the cost of transporting energy from one place to the next.
"Another one is weather," Perino said.
Even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh blamed the diversion of foodgrain for producing fuel and high crude oil prices for rising inflation in India.
"The world economy has not done enough to address the challenge of price rise," he said.
His remarks were an obvious reference to reports that even though the global production of maize went up by 40 million tonnes last year, close to 30 million tonnes was used to produce ethanol, making the commodity sharply costlier.
The prime minister's remarks came against the backdrop of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's remark that an improvement in the diets of Indian and Chinese people was a big reason for sky rocketing prices of grain worldwide.
The prime minister said inflation management was an immediate challenge. "This has consequences for growth, it has consequences for income distribution and it has consequences for your competitiveness."