BUSH BLAMES India for rising food prices not BioFuel.....

While his basic reasoning is right, some of what Bush says is simply not quite true.

He is not BLAMING India but rather explaining one of the causes of food price rise. The article is however paranoid piece by somebody who has a really small ego.

Another point is that as India prospers ( I wont believe Merkel's garbage about eating two meals, they have always been eating plenty there! Probably she should ask germans to drink less beer and eat more real food! ) they are going to get better techniques at producing more food for themselves. They are already one of the largest producers of rice, sugar, etc as a large part of their population is still engaged in agriculture. Add to this they have the most number of vegetarians amongst them and this would make their needs less resource intensive than Americans or Europeans who eat more meat. Compared to the amount of food the US imports to the amount of food India imports America, Europe etc are more to blame for having such large consumption beyond their requirements that has led to this situation.

Originally posted by stikkinikki
The cost of everything is going up due to rising fuel prices. Add in the rising costs of fertilizers and pesticides and it's no wonder food prices are going up. Scapegoating biofuels is unproductive and not even close to the full truth.

Very well said. Supply and demand is everything in a free-market system. The arabs are getting rich at everyone else's expense; not that is really unfair though since the west has been exploiting them for many decades.

Asian countries are well on their way to becoming fully developed. The supply remains relatively constant but the demand is dramatically increasing thus dramatically raising the prices. Everything is interconnected.

Political instability in the middle east also plays a factor but probably not as big as some think.

A demand for better nutrition is the problem then is it?

What was done before to stop people from India getting their naturally given right of being able to eat what they like?

Who made sure they had a poor diet before?

Was it so that McDonalds could corner the market?
Or Pizza hut..?

Or maybe any future "Disney world India" food chains...

Those words, and I will quote them,

Prosperity in countries like India is "good" but it triggers increased demand for "better nutrition" which in turn leads to higher food prices, US President George W Bush said.

are akin to any statement made by any dictator towards those who may be seen unworthy or below TPTB.
It's literally an admission of enslavement or deprivation.

I can just imagine the Jews in the prison camps getting an extra carrot each and the base commandant being shot for giving the "Untermenchen" too good a diet.

Originally posted by Anti-Tyrant
It is fairly typical for the Bush Cru. to make these sorts of comments without actually providing any sort of reasoning as to how to deal with the situation.

[edit on 3-5-2008 by Anti-Tyrant]

Also, a fairly typical post ...

You also left out "any sort of reasoning as to how" you would deal with the situation. So, what do you propose? Should we nuke them to cut their demand for the world's food and fuel?

To me, the problem apperars to be way too many people in India and China. And if the U.S. is being asked to make draconian cuts in our lifestyle "to help out the world", how about India and China being asked to make draconian cuts in their populations to help out the rest of the world?

Whilst i detest Mr.Bush and his administration there is much truth in what he is saying. Biofuels are part of the problem when produced from food crops but the increasing demand for quality food and greater quantities of meat in countries like China and India are driving up the prices.

Let's not just throw this issue on the bandwagon of "anything Bush says is wrong". If you take enough random swings at the nail you'll eventually hit it's head and Bush has done that here. Biofuels are i agree part of the problem, but it's a smaller part than the growing countries out there.

Originally posted by centurion1211To me, the problem apperars to be way too many people in India and China.

It's part of the problem, but the western diet of high quantities of meat is also to blaim. A field of wheat fed to cattle could fill the stomachs of far more people than the meat from the cow will. If we reduced our intake of meat we'd see more food to go around and also healthier people, less instances of stomach and intestinal cancer, less heart attacks and strokes and many other benefits.

I'm not saing go vegetarian though, i love meat far to much for that

[edit on 3-5-2008 by ImaginaryReality1984]

i detest Mr.Bush and his administration there is much truth in what he is saying. Biofuels are part of the problem when produced from food crops but the increasing demand for quality food and greater quantities of meat in countries like China and India are driving up the prices.

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SO what you & bush saying here is nutrition & health food came later 1st lets make biofuel .it sucks where is humanity its a right of every human being to have health & nutrion food.Come on how you can count human a unit the living beaing not machine taht they need to feel biofuel.I think food is more importent then mr bush biolfuel

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]

Originally posted by 123space
SO what you & bush saying here is nutrition & health food came later 1st lets make biofuel .it sucks where is humanity its a right of every human being to have health & nutrion food.Come on how you can count human a unit the living beaing not machine taht they need to feel biofuel.I think food is more importent then mr bush biolfuel

WHAT?! Are you uable to understand what i said or purposefully twisting what i was saying? I was saying that biofuels are a problem AND the increase in population are a problem. It is both of these things that are causing rising costs in food but the major cause is the population rise, not biofuels.

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]

Originally posted by IAF101

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.

I agree, i've mentioned above that we in the west eat to much meat, it's meat production that uses shocking amounts of grain and other food crops. If we firstly cut back on our meat consumption and secondly stopped people from getting obese there would be more to go around. I find it disgusting some people consume enough food themselves that would be able to feed four seperate people.

hehe how did India and china and the rest of Asia get the Prosperity that is enabling this growth in food consumption.......

OH yea the west sent all the boring physical jobs there.... then the service center jobs, then the high tech jobs then the - well what next? Bollywood..


Wait until the 2 billion asians want the cars the country driving and the long holidays of the west..

Perhaps we can become a tourist destination to see the poor westerners.

Pfffft, almost spat my Columbian coffee all over my Maple Cheesecake reading that article.

India? Guilty of a food scare in the US?

Does he even own a map?

Remember guys, Bush is the same moron who claimed airport lineups are long because the skies are crowded.


Next he'll tell you homeless people from India are crossing some imaginary border on foot into the USA, stealing your food, and crossing back over.
(sarcasm implied... remember, Bush is the one who can't comprehend geography.)


Doesn't Bush ever get tired of being used as a puppet and the village idiot?
You'd think by now he would have shown at least a little desire to think for himself.

It's the Rice Bowl Effect: a man in India eating an extra bowl of rice causes rice shortages and rice prices to increase worldwide. Actually, there is a grain of truth in what he said (pun intended ), but I don't see his example as contributing to recent effects.
He must have learned this lesson in prosperity from his Iraq invasion. Citizens in Baghdad bought air conditioners and other major appliances after the invasion, which put more stress on the already stressed electrical grid.

"We're an unbelievably compassionate nation," he said. "I think we ought to change our food policy in Africa and other developing countries...buying food directly from farmers as opposed to giving people food. I think we ought to be saying, 'Why don't we help you be able to deal with scarcity by encouraging your farmers to grow and be efficient growers? Otherwise, we're going to be in this cycle forever."

My first thought was, "Wow, now this is the way to go!", until I did a reality check and realized what he meant was, "We're compassionate towards corporations, so we'll help our corporations like Monsanto to sell GMO seeds to every African farmer."

...I happen to believe when we find people who can't find food we ought to help them find it.

Maybe he can enlist Miss Teen South Carolina to help them find it.




[edit on 4-5-2008 by desert]

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]

"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.

Blatantly biased. They started this anti-biofuel bulldookie a year or so ago. When you villify the WHOLE biofuel industry for the perception that food is going to biofuel instead of peoples mouths you do injustice to people that are working on fuels to replace or improve our existing relationship with middle east oil.

QUI BONO?

Who is threatened by the biofuel industry?

Is all of our cropland being farmed?

think before you leap

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.

man, are americans and their president a bunch of whiner sissies who love to blame China/India or what ???
useless big inefficient SUV's like escalade and navigator are gas guzzlers for these americans want bio fuels and then they whine about food prices ..

what a bunch of morons

Is Dubya talking about the demand and supply of food...or could it really be the demand and supply of dollar currency?

As wallets are being tightened in the US and UK and other 'high price nations' less currency is being spend by the man in the street on food and consumer goods owing to the percieved notion of 'recession' then what would make more sense than to put $700 million into circulation in India where it will still have a greater comparative value to the local currency there, than in the US or the EU and can therefore purchase a greater quantity of goods per currency unit than in the developed world

just a thought...

Originally posted by BrezhnevX
man, are americans and their president a bunch of whiner sissies who love to blame China/India or what ???
useless big inefficient SUV's like escalade and navigator are gas guzzlers for these americans want bio fuels and then they whine about food prices ..

what a bunch of morons

Guess we Americans were too "stupid" to solve our population and lifestyle problems like you "brilliant" soviets did. I just don't know why we didn't think of shooting, starving, etc. over 20 million of our own people like the "mental giant" soviets did.

Still dreaming of the "glory days" when you could kill just about anyone you wanted (and hoped you weren't next on the list yourself)? Guess what, babushka, they ain't coming back.