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IN MEDIA – MAY 2008
In
Media Archive...
Editorial: Food
fight
www.Canadianbusiness.com, May 29, 2008
From the June 16, 2008 issue of Canadian
Business magazine
U.S. President George W. Bush recently
sparked an international fight over fat,
after attributing global inflation in food
prices to Indians’ eating more. “There are
350 million people in India who are
classified as middle class. When you start
getting wealth, you start demanding better
nutrition and better food,” Bush said
during a question-and-answer session in
Missouri on May 2. “Demand is high, and
that causes the price to go up.”
On one point, Bush is right. According to
a World Bank report released April 9, food
prices have risen 83% in the past three
years. That has provoked riots in Asia,
price controls on tortillas in Mexico, and
rationing of rice sales in the U.S.
Pradeep S. Mehta, secretary general of the
Consumer Unity & Trust Society
International, a think-tank in India,
quickly weighed in with his own analysis.
The food problem has “clearly” been
created by Americans: they consume 50%
more calories than Indians do, he told the
International Herald Tribune on May 12. If
Americans were more the size of an average
middle-class Indian, he added, “many
hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa would
find food on their plates.”
To imply that tubby
Americans or ravenous Indians chowing
their way up the food chain are somehow
responsible for inflation on the scale we
now see is absurd. However, the Bush
versus Mehta fight illustrates a larger
point. Policy-makers need to think more
intelligently about food and energy
policies, particularly the notion
underpinning biofuel policy — that
farmland should be used to grow fuel. Both
the International Monetary Fund and the
World Bank have published reports that
single out biofuel policies as culprits in
the spike in food prices. In April, an
expert panel commissioned by the European
Union to study the issue called for the EU
to freeze its 10% biofuel quota
“immediately.”
In Canada, we’re
marching in precisely the opposite
direction. The federal Conservatives plan
to spend $2.2 billion promoting biofuels
over the next nine years. Meanwhile,
parliamentarians debate Bill C-33,
legislation that would mandate 5% biofuel
in gasoline in Canada from 2010. It sailed
through a first vote on May 1, with
support from the Bloc and the Liberals. It
awaits a final vote and Senate approval.
Before it gets there, though,
policy-makers should stop to consider
whether enshrining demand for biofuels in
law is any smarter than Bush’s fat fight.
This
news item
can also be viewed at:
http://www.canadianbusiness.com
Food crisis: The
blame game
Business Line, May 21, 2008
By Pradeep S Mehta and Siddhartha Mitra
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The world food crisis, despite all
efforts to shift the blame, has been
born out of life-style imbalances in
the US and like-minded nations,
characterised by an excess of
nutrition and locomotion, say
PRADEEP S. MEHTA and SIDDHARTHA
MITRA. |

In a series of ignorant and insensitive
comments, the US President, Mr George
Bush, has blamed the current food scarcity
problem and price spiral on the rapid
development of India and China.
Insensitive because these countries have
not even reached 20 per cent of the level
of affluence being enjoyed by the US and
other developed countries and ignorant
because the increased volume of food
consumption by India and China is
definitely not the primary cause of the
price spiral.
Hidden behind the smugness of these
comments, a guilt complex possibly lurks —
of having engineered a disaster through
opulent, wasteful and often gluttonous
lifestyles which have taken consumption of
food and fuel to unsustainable levels. It
is in fact their effort to “sustain the
unsustainable” which has led to the
current food crisis. This is clear from
the Table.
Some statistics
In 1979, according to the FAO Statistical
Yearbook, per capita food consumption in
the US stood at 3,180 calories — a level
of consumption that maintains the body
weight of a sedentary human weighing 96
kg. Even at such levels of excess, the US
continued to make a fetish and virtue out
of increasing levels of consumption.
As a result, around 2003, the average
calorie intake had ballooned to 3,770
calories — an 18.5 per cent jump over the
1979 level — which is adequate to sustain
a person weighing 114 kg. Though obvious,
it deserves mention that such excesses are
bad for the US as well. In 2002, 30.4 per
cent of the adult population was
considered obese by the American Heart
Association.
Recent research suggests that obesity can
also shorten the lifespan of both adults
and children. Besides, obesity is
expensive, with the WHO estimating medical
expenses on obesity-related problems at 12
per cent of US’ total healthcare costs.
The figures in the Table indicate that the
average American consumes 1,629 calories
more than what is needed to maintain ideal
body weight when following a sedentary
lifestyle. This implies that even
physically active Americans are consuming
way more than what they need. Thus, the
way for Americans and other developed
nations to come out of obesity is to
consume less which, in turn, would
facilitate better nourishment for the
starving and the hungry in developing
countries.
The Table also shows that even in many
other developed countries, such as
Germany, the UK and Australia, an excess
of around 1,000 calories are consumed
daily. China too has a reasonably large
excess intake of over 900 calories,
whereas Japan’s over-consumption is modest
by developed country standards.
On the other hand, the per capita
consumption of India at 2440 calories
corresponds to an excess of 462 calories
over sedentary consumption needed to
maintain ideal body weight. In rural
India, where life basically is still non-mechanised,
the physical rigour of a bucolic life eats
away such tiny surpluses.
The problem of obesity does exist in India
but it has not yet reached epidemic
proportions as seen in the US; there is
still a 20 per cent incidence of
under-nourishment.
To top it all, India’s relatively modest
level of per capita calorific intake rose
only 17.5 per cent in 1979-2002 — slower
than that of the US. Therefore, if
anything, purely from a consumption point
of view Americans are more to blame for
stoking inflationary fires in the food
sector. Note that African countries bring
up the rear as far as calorific
consumption is concerned.
Under-nourished Africa
Countries such as Gambia and Ghana, for
which data on average height and therefore
ideal weight exist, show surpluses of 275
calories and 10 calories over sedentary
consumption. With a lifestyle still based
on physical movement, at least in the
rural areas, even this average calorific
intake might denote a state of
under-nourishment.
Countries such as Ethiopia and Somalia,
for which there are no estimates of
average height and ideal body weight, are
seemingly worse off with an average
calorie consumption of around 1,800. It is
this part of the world that scrimps and
scrounges while the US and other developed
countries splurge.
Declining US exports
The US is also guilty on another account —
they have pulled the rug out from under a
growing developing world’s feet through a
decrease in food exports when the rapid
rise of affluence in the latter actually
warrants the opposite. Over the 1970s and
1980s wheat exports from the US to the
rest of the world almost doubled. In the
seventeen years that followed there has
been a dip of 24 per cent in wheat
exports, much of it being used to produce
oil rather than food to maintain an
unsustainable fuel guzzling lifestyle.
Such massive decreases in food exports
make the US’ claim that bio-fuels explain
less than 2/100th of the recent massive
rise in food prices seem ridiculous. It
is, therefore, interesting and relevant to
note that the world food crisis, despite
all efforts to shift the blame, has been
born out of life style imbalances in the
US and like-minded nations — an excess of
nutrition and locomotion.
The authors are Secretary-General and
Director (Research), CUTS International
and can be reached at
psm@cuts.org
and
sm2@cuts.org respectively.
This article can also be viewed at:
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/
He started it! Did not!
www.agweb.com,
May 16, 2008
Anyone else see
the world food crisis diminishing to a
sand box fight? The latest handful of
sand was launched from India, where
apparently they feel the world blames
them for food shortages because of their
growing prosperity.
I don't know that
anyone is blaming anybody for anything.
Rather, the prosperity there should be
celebrated, while the world tries to
find a way to produce more food to feed
a more prosperous world.
A
Wednesday
afternoon article
on the
New York Times Web
site
quoted Pradeep Mehta, secretary general
of the center for international trade,
economics and the environment for the
India-based think tank
CUTS International.
He threw the proverbial sand in the eyes
of Americans, including our own
President, who keep trying to explain
the reason commodity prices are
increasing is due to improved diets and
more demand for food around the world.
He doesn't like it that we keep saying
biofuels are only part of the reason,
but a greater reason is the prosperity
and subsequent better diets enjoyed by a
growing middle class in countries like
India. He says that's wrong.
Seemingly, he
wiped the sand from his hands,
put his hands on his hips, looked at the
teacher and said "they started it!";
Mehta says we need to look no further
than our own mirrors for the problem to
the world's food shortage.
His claim is if
the average U.S. citizen will lose a few
pounds by simply eating less, we could
divert enough food to feed sub-Saharan
Africa.
(Pretend here my
face is turning red, my hands are on my
hips, and I'm about to cry from
confusion.) Yeah, well I admit I could
lose a few pounds. But...but they eat
too, I've always eaten well, and well,
they are eating better.
Bruce Scherr, CEO
of Informa Economics, estimates1.5
billion people around the world
have entered a middle class lifestyle in
the last decade. That number is likely
to continue increasing as more
high-paying jobs originate in developing
countries.
Who's blaming
them for anything? Shouldn't this be
celebrated, albeit there are some
hardships we have to work through as a
world community?
The rhetoric about
the world food crisis is becoming
something it never should--a political
game of who started it. Maybe the world
needs to start looking at the root
causes and what needs to happen to fix
it.
We are in a
situation where worldwide production is
on the increase, but because prosperity
in countries like Brazil, China, and
yes, India, is increasing, people are
indeed eating better. That's a fact and
it's one of the greatest economic
success stories in the history of the
world.
We have kinks to
work through for sure, but I believe the
rhetoric should shift from one of blame
to one of problem solving and expansion
of world markets to feed the world.
Oil Shock: Trying to
make the complex simple
www.pennlive.com,
May 16, 2008
People want
answers. They want to be able to point to
something and say that's what caused it.
That's as true with the current pain at the
pump or higher prices at the supermarket as
it is with any other development that
impacts our lives. Profiteering oil
companies. The shrinking value of the
dollar. Speculators. OPEC. Rising
consumption in China and India.
Wait a second.
Better be careful on that last explanation.
Aside from the
fact that too many Americans live in a cocoon
that insulates them from most of what's
happening in other parts of the world, it
probably should not come as too great a shock
that there are people in both India and China
who object to a country with 5 percent of the
world's population consuming close to a
quarter of its oil blaming someone else for a
jump in oil prices.
A seemingly
innocent comment by President Bush's earlier
this month in Missouri about India's growing
middle class and worldwide rising food prices
prompted "scorn" in New Delhi, The New
York Times reported May 14. Here's what
the president said: "When you start getting
wealth, you start demanding better nutrition
and better food, and so demand is high, and
that cause prices to go up."
One prominent
Indian, Pradeep S. Mehta, secretary general of
the center for international trade, economics
and the environment at CUTS International in
New Delhi, according to The Times,
said that if Americans slimmed down to the
weight of middle-class Indians, "many hungry
people in sub-Saharan Africa would find food
on their plates." He went to say that the
money Americans spend on liposuction to remove
excess fat could be used to feed victims of
famine.
These are not
isolated sentiments. Many people in other
countries are offended by what they see as
America's gluttony in consuming the planet's
finite resources and its insensitivity in
failing to respond to such global challenges
as climate change and international food
shortages. Many Americans think some
malevolent force is behind high oil and gas
prices. Many foreigners say we are the
problem. And they aren't happy about it.
The American
way of life does require the expenditure of an
inordinate amount of the world's resources.
Half of the planet's 6.6 billion people live
on less than two dollars a day. Earth simply
does not have the resources to permit the rest
of mankind to live on the scale of calorie
intake, housing and mobility enjoyed by the
average American.
But that's
today. The way things are headed it should be
obvious that America's excesses are not
sustainable. We are part of the
problem. We need to do more with less. And
there isn't really a choice. Those looking for
a simple answer need to confront the reality
of a world of a still-growing population - a
projected additional 2.5 billion people by
2050 - and its finite, ever-shrinking
resources from oil to food and much in
between.
This news item can also
be viewed at:
http://blog.pennlive.com/
Beta Beats Alpha
The Daily Reckoning, May 16, 2008
By
Bill Bonner
Real investment
gains come from being in the right place
at the right time.
The most reliable
and entertaining trait of humankind is
vanity. Despite much evidence to the
contrary, men see themselves at the very
centre of the universe…the alpha of all
creation. Without man, nothing
happens…trees fall in the forest, but who
cares?
Primitive people imagine that they are to
blame for whatever goes wrong –
floods…earthquakes…volcanic eruptions;
they appease the gods by tossing nubile
virgins into volcanoes and building huge
monuments of granite in their honour.
Modern people imagine that they are to
thank for whatever goes right. Did they
not write the Treaty of Versailles…and
invent both Long Range Ballistic Missiles
as well as Long Term Capital Management?
Didn’t they build Las Vegas? And hasn’t
Ben Bernanke finally taken the crunch out
of the credit cycle?
What follows is basically a lament…a
wail…a whining reflection on how we
flatter ourselves…and why the most
flattered are the best short sale
candidates. The short version is that
“alpha” is a windy fraud. In broader
terms, the moral of the story is simply
that whenever you feel proud enough to
offer advice to others, you should prepare
to get it yourself. Good and hard.
What brought this to mind is a news item
from the New York Times. America’s
president seems to have an insight. The
reason food prices were going up, he
guessed, was because people in India had
more money in their pockets and now they
wanted to eat more. This remark might have
gone unnoticed, but for the fact that it
was true. The foreigners are getting
richer…and uppity. “Asian Age,” of New
Delhi, whose name gives you an idea of the
way the Indians think things are going,
said the US president wouldn’t “get
away…with passing the buck on to India.”
Others threw biofuels and agricultural
subsidies in America’s face. Then,
striking low, they said Americans ate too
much; if they just slimmed down to the
weight of middle-class Indians, said
Pradeep S. Mehta, “many hungry people in
sub-Saharan Africa would find food on
their plates.”
What a revolting development! For four
generations, America has been the world’s
alpha nation – the country with the money,
the power, and the answers. Generations of
Americans have offered advice to the rest
of the planet, confident that they knew
best what was good for everyone. Wilson
showed up in Le Havre with his “14 Points”
in 1918. Clemenceau remarked sourly that
“God only needed 10.” From then until six
months ago, the world’s unfortunates had
to put up with American know-it-alls.
“Tear down this wall,” said Ronald Reagan
and the neo-cons. “Dollarise” said Jeffrey
Sachs and the Chicago boys. US military
“advisors” showed foreign armies and
terrorist groups how to kill more
efficiently. US businessmen explained how
to set up factories and operate them more
profitably. (F. W. Taylor introduced
‘scientific management’ …Stalin loved his
ideas, which still are known as
‘Taylorism’ in much of the world.)
A
long stream of professors handed out trade
secrets like chewing gum, confident that
the ideas would never stick; foreigners
would never really get the hang of it.
They urged free-market policies, monetary
reforms, and market regulations.
Agricultural engineers introduced peasants
to pesticides and DDT. And just as 17 th
century priests showed the heathen how to
copulate correctly, our own world
improvers demonstrated to couples all over
the world how to copulate without
begetting. There was no vanity too
absurd…no pretension too embarrassing. By
the 1960s, Americans were even sending
their children – who hadn’t yet learned a
trade or earned a living – in the belief
that their callow bodies, in the Peace
Corps, might lift the fuzzy wuzzies out of
poverty like Pharaoh’s wife plucking Moses
up out of the bulrushes.
And then, wouldn’t you know it? The little
Moses all over the world took the advice,
set up their own shops…and now they’re
back-sassing America’s president and
stealing its best customers.
And here, for further elaboration, we
return to the world of money. While
Americans offered advice gratuitously,
Wall Street offered its own advice, for a
price. The financial industry hotshots
said that they, too, had some special
magic. Yet, a colleague recently handed us
a chart of the London stock market over
the last 107 years. What is remarkable
about it is that it shows a flattish line
beginning over the far left and running
right along the bottom for ¾ of the page.
Then, after lying in the dirt for ¾ of a
century, the chart suddenly springs to
life like a locust, in the early ‘80s. In
the next 20 years, it shot up more than
1000%.
This same phenomenon is visible in almost
any market you choose to look at. There
are small gains…and small losses…all the
time. But the big gains come all at once.
In the gold market, for example, except
for occasional war spikes, the price
barely budged from the defeat of the
Spanish Armada until the 1970s. Then, an
investor who bought the stuff in 1972
would have seen his money multiplied 21
times in the next eight years. Following
this exertion, gold went back to sleep…and
didn’t wake up for another two decades.
The pretence of America is the pretence of
Wall Street. It is pretence of alpha
itself and the vanity of the species.
While Wall Street promised investors
elusive, above-market gains - alpha - the
real gains came from merely being in the
right place at the right time. Beta, in
other words. Likewise, it was no special
genius that put Americans on top of the
world; it was simply being in the right
place at the right time. Too bad they
can’t stay there.
This news item can also be viewed at:
http://www.dailyreckoning.co.uk/
Indians bristle at
U.S. criticism on food prices
Tehran Times, May 15, 2008
By Heather Timmons
Instead of blaming India and other
developing nations for the rise in food
prices, Americans should rethink their
energy policy and go on a diet, say a
growing number of politicians, economists
and academics in New Delhi.
Criticism of the United States has ballooned
in India recently, particularly after the
Bush administration seemed to blame India’s
increasing middle class and prosperity for
rising food prices. Critics from India seem
to be asking one underlying question: “Why
do Americans think they deserve to eat more
than Indians?”
The food problem has “clearly” been created
by Americans, who are eating 50 percent more
calories than the average person in India,
said Pradeep Mehta, the secretary general of
CUTS Center for International Trade,
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