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In an interactive session at the Peace Corps 2008 Country Directors Conference, Rice said the ongoing food crisis was mainly due to "four causes", even as she specifically pointed out the exchange rate and the simple "inability" of getting food to the people.
"There are, kind of, four causes that we really have to look at. We’ve got to understand better what is happening in some conflict areas in terms of the distribution of food. Its obvious that there are places like Sudan, where we’ve had a sudden uptick in the inability to distribute food," Rice said.
The top Bush administration official said: "We obviously have to look at places where production seems to be declining and declining to the point that people are actually putting export caps on the amount of food.
"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. So, that’s another element that we have to look at," she said.
The "incredible cost" that fuel prices, everything from fertilizer to transportation costs, was bringing on the ability to distribute or to get food to people, was identified as another factor by Rice.
The fourth factor was the one relating to "biofuels", which was "not a large part of the problem, but it may, in fact, be a part of the problem," she added.
I was under the impression that earthquakes, epidemics, tsunamis, famines, and floods, should bring humanity to fore because they are beyond human control as of now. On the other hand, problems like drinking, gambling, and desire for male or female child are controllable. If the world devotes whatever resources it can spare for the later categories, there will have none remaining for the really needy. We Indians are in the later category. Therefore, expecting any favors is wrong. And demanding that others spend as per our wishes is the most brazen expectation. I am reminded of the beggars at some traffic signals, who dont beg but demand. Who will feel like helping us out if we do something that?
I thnk rich states have enough food and money to save the whole world many many times over. Poor excuses are given for the food crisis. The defence budgets are huge, and this is what you call global crime.
WOW, I never expected such subtly RACIST comments coming from her! Seems to me she thinks only white people (and certain pro-West collaborators) have the right to proper nutrition. According to her statements, people outside of the West must accept malnutrition while those in the West are "free" to be obese and use food to power their cars.What a RACIST!!
The land and the resources of North America never belonged to the Europeans who occupied it using even bio warfare methods to eliminate the original population. Now they want the Islamic population to be extinct gradually by using agri products for production of biofuels, which is not a bad idea from our point of view.. Once the Gulf nations run out of oil and gas they will go back to their nomadic days. The West is making the rich Arab nations invest in foolish constructions and divert their attention from food security. An example is Dubai emirate in UAE. Dubai has not sufficient oil but survives on re-export of all junk and relabeled designated and pirated items. The firms in Dubai sell items that cannot be sold anywhere else in the world like the Chernobyl contaminated milk powder from Europe was finally sold to Bangladesh. Dubai does not have a single intelligent local who can maintain even a lift and depends on expatriates. So once the oil boom is over in UAE, the foolish constructions in Dubai will become a burden on them. Dubai is not self sufficient in agri products and will never be if the way the West is leading that Gulf state and this is true for all Islamic nations..
A refinery hasn’t been built in over 30 years like the nuke plant construction that has not happened for the last 30 years in USA. Discovery and development of alternate energy is restricted in the US. So there is no production or refining capacity to feed US needs. US refineries are dilapidated and so overworked that they are now at the point of no return: There is going to be massive petrol shortages in the future. US has vast stores of potential energy supplies like the recent find of natural gas and oil in the Gulf of Mexico, holding up to 15 billion barrels of oil and hupe reserves of natural gas, Arctic natural wildlife reserve hold up to 15 billion barrels of oil. But it appears that USA is keeping all these as reserves till the oil is run out in the Gulf nations. US has plenty of Coal, and not used on various reasons. Now they started biofuel production out of corn crop instead of other biofuel plants like in India.
It appears Bush administration is not in the habit of reading media reports and instead create its own Weapons of Mass Misinformation. In India the poor are already skipping one meal. UN official Jean Ziegler says that the US and the European Union have taken a criminal path by encouraging use of food crops to produce bio-fuels and thus contributing to an explosive rise in global food prices. Last year the US used a third of its corn crop to create bio-fuels, while the European Union is planning to have 10 per cent of its need supplied by bio-fuels, he said and called for a for a five-year moratorium on the production of bio-fuels. But we should not blame US and EU as they are doing what is necessary for their nations. The mass breeding of Third world nations esp the Christian and muslim communities is also responsible for the food shortage. The world can sustain only half the present population. If the famines are killing many it is quite a natural phenomenon. It is better for the survival of human race, the inefficient and incompetent populations should disappear from the face of the earth.
If Americans were slim and maintained their weight by eating 150 fewer calories a day, $487 billion thus saved would have changed the whole world for better. Read at http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Insurance/Advice/WhatIfNoOneWereFat.aspx?page=1
what a pity, this women something Rice...has no idea what she is talking about, as if Indians were eating leaves and grasses earlier...and now Pizza and Burgers are improved diet ...ha ha ha ha. what is this women?
There is a concerted effort everywhere to try to say that the Mess we find India in, is not due to Congress/Sonia/so-called economist Manmohan/so-called finance man Chidambaram.. Instead of scouring the world to see some smalltime news about Sudanese having some food problem, let us simply face the facts, so that we can strike at the root of the problem and consequently find a SOLUTION. The root of the problem is the we have such a corrupt governmment in the gang of Congress/Sonia/Communists(
The USA is the most obese country in the world. And the USA is has the most gas guzzlers in the world. If Condi could have a program to educate Americans on their habits of global resource wastage the world will definitely be a much abundant food and fuel independent place. Alongwith, if the school curriculam could include democratic principles and how people should vote their elected leaders, people like Bush and Cheney will never again be elected even to the local municipality/councillor positions.
IF there is nothing wrong with it then why not keep quiet and allow others to hypothesize as well?. Dont stop Indians from talking. IF the coment/hypothesis or whatever you like to call it was made about the UK you would have seen many BRiITS posting very agressive and offensive statements taking exception. Many of these Indians here live in the west- and they know the politics in those countries. They know the connotations of statements. They arent fools as you imagine. And on the contarary could you be called one for thinking they were not intelligent enough?. Do you know facts to support what she said?- if not why not keep quiet?.
How misleading is the headline and fools are there to rush in!! Come on guys. She said "improved diets" that means they can afford better due to better economy. She never said behind the crisis, which would have meant it was created purposely. Think before you fall into traps of misleading headlines!
Food shortage in countries that produce the maximum(India,bangladesh,pakistan,afganistan and china),that s the greatest joke.Enough of western diplomacy , countries like India should think meeting their own citizens' demands rather than always nodding heads to western pressures ,afterall someday or the other every single indian would understand the real cause for such inflations ,so politicians please stop playing and for god s sake stop playing with the lives of your proper countrymen.
Mr. Fitz, people who are putting messages on this board are not fools. We did read the article. Why didn't she hypothesize the fact that people in developed countries like US waste so much food. See in developing countries like India, very little food gets wasted (i.e. leftovers are recycled many times before they are wasted, if at all. Even some God's name is invoked to deter people from wasting it). On the contrary, I have been in the US for past 20 years and I can tell you how much food can be saved, how much energy just by basic things like shutting of lights in the night or when not in use, don't cook or buy food items that are more than required, please teach children not to waste food as well as eat too much become obese and many more. So, she should look at making her home country wastage of food a priority rather than hypothesizing what India and China do. Look where we are in Iraq by hypothesizing. We have created more terrorists than there were before. Great plan for peace
I repeat - the headline is misleading. Please read the entire article. No where is Condi insinuating Indians or Chinese for artificially hoarding food. Please if you lived in the US for 20 years then have some respect for your host country - whatever prosperity India has seen in the last decade has a lot to do with the US education system and liberal immigration policies. Let us see if India can do the same if it ever can get out of the clutches of a corrupt government and a people that don't seem to care for the plight of the poor and disadvantaged. BTW US leads the world in per capita donations to charitable causes - and I think that earns them the moral high ground on some issues.
Condi Rice should stop eating rice if she is so worried about food shortage. America should stop invading countries for oil for it would save oil used to transport there soldiers to different parts of the world. America should invest in mass transport system rather than people buying cars. Fuel used to transport there soldiers and food to them in various countries, could be used for consturctive purpose rather than destructive purpose by america.
The first cause of the food shortage is the money thirsty American and European business men investing on bio fuel and consuming tons of millions corn and other produce for bio fuel. Indian agriculture and industry was distroyed during Brittish rule and every thing had to be imported from Britton. Many people died due to starvattion during those days. Now the food crisis errupted and they are blaming India and China. These western leaders are shameless morons.
Its becoming common with US leaders to push the blame on India and China. To escape the blame in Global warming, Bush administration on and off blame India and China for increasing consumption of gas and fuel. Now it is shortage in food and increase in it prices. According to Condi its on account of bettering of diet in India and China that food shortages are developing. Really? Whom is she kidding? In US the farmers are crying that NAFTA is killing all impetus to US farming. Secondly, its the fuel prices which have direct bearing to hit food shortages. People take to use of Ethanol, a renewable, homegrown fuel that can help lower U.S. dependence on foreign oil. But as more and more ethanol is made from corn, less and less corn is available for food production, and that’s causing some unforeseen problems. I think she isnt aware that in India itself food shortages are being experienced, and there is noises made about the increase in prices. Will some body brief our Secretary of State?
Does it have nothing to do with the pandemic of obesity in western countries?
Condy is simply parrotting the infamous and out-dated Malthusian theory that the poor are responsible for their poverty Most of the Indians are vegetarians A cow for meat in the West eats grains sufficient for one hundred persons If the west becomes vegetarian there will be no food crisis and shortages in the world
Its becoming common with US leaders to push the blame on India and China. To escape the blame in Global warming, Bush administration on and off blame India and China for increasing comsumption of gas and fuel. Now it is shortage in food and increase in it prices.According to Condi its on account of bettering of diet in India and China that food shortages are developing. Really? whom is she kidding? In US the farmers are crying that NAFTA is killing all impeteus to US farming. Secondly, its the fuel prices which have direct bearing to hit foodshortages. People take to use of Ethanol, a renewable, homegrown fuel that can help lower U.S. dependence on foreign oil. But as more and more ethanol is made from corn, less and less corn is available for food production, and that´s causing some unforeseen problems. I think she isnt aware that in India itself foodshortages are being experienced, and there is noises made about the increase in prices.will some body brief our Secretary of State?
This is nothing but irresponsible journalism. The headline is misleading at best and the crowd took the bait. All she said was improved diets in India and China have stopped the flow of grain that was otherwise exported - what is so wrong about that, it is just an hypothesis.
Note to environmentalists in the West: Remember, you were the ones who demanded biofuels the loudest. It turns out the production of biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel is likely to cause far more environmental damage than it prevents not to mention triggering widespread famine and eating up more rainforest and grassland than beef production ever could. The production and consumption of biofuels releases far more carbon emissions than are prevented when ordinary gasoline and diesel are burned without first being mixed with corn or sugar cane derivatives.Even the world's first tentative steps towards increasing biofuel production has caused a doubling of annual deforestation rates in the Amazon. According to Wetlands International, Indonesia has razed so much wilderness to grow palm oil trees for biodiesel that it has moved from the world's 21st-biggest greenhouse gas emitter to third in just the past three years. Only China and the USA are the two big emitters of carbon monoxide.
What about the drought in Australia?
There are all the signs of a major cost explosion in the near future, threatening massive suffering across all of Asia. African finance ministers, meeting in Addis Ababa on April 2 have responded to the global food crisis by demanding food production for their own countries’ consumption rather than for export. The call which goes against orthodox neoliberal policies pushed by Western governments and financial institutions follows recent continent-wide food revolts and dire warnings of starvation made by FAO and echoed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank in an April 12-13 meeting. The FAO has identified 21 of Africa’s 36 countries as suffering from a food crisis, with food riots spreading. In February, 40 people were killed in Cameroon with 200 arrested in Burkina Faso and 24 in Senegal. Riots have also occurred in Ethiopia and the Ivory Coast. For all this it is USA and other Western governments to blame and not India and China.
A food crisis caused largely by skyrocketing prices has hit dozens of countries across the Third World, while a report this month by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) argues that increasing production of ‘agrofuels’ (the large-scale production of biofuels, using food crops to create fuels such as ethanol) by Western companies poses a threat to the world’s population who would die of hunger because of this. An Asia-wide shortage of rice — the region’s staple food — has emerged in recent months. The Oryza rice industry website reports a World Bank estimate that around 33 countries face potential social unrest because of rising food and energy prices. Two of the top three exporters, India and Vietnam, have stopped selling abroad in order to secure their domestic food supply. The world’s largest producer, China, needs its 123 million tonnes for its own population. Now, worrying strains are appearing in Thailand, the remaining major exporter.
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