Who's to Blame in Our Global Food Crisis?

Hot on the heels of the news that the BJP in India was angry at Vijay Mallya for bringing scandalous cheerleaders to India to cheer at cricket matches, it seems they are once again getting their socks in a dander over comments that President Bush recently made during a press conference. According to a speech which President Bush made the other day, he intimated that the global food crisis was due, in part, to the increasing demand being placed on the world food supply by the increasingly affluent middle and upper class parts of India's population. The outrage was instantaneous and in some small part, understandable but whether you love President Bush and the BJP or hate them, it does create an interesting scenario to be considered.

In economics there's a theory that says as demand increases and supply is limited, manufacturers or producers can begin to basically charge anything they want in order to turn a tidy profit. It's a common enough theory, it's the basic principle which is taught to economists over here. While Bush's observations regarding the food crisis may be correct to a certain degree, it isn't correct to put the entire blame on Indian society. But look at it from this perspective. Over the past decade or so, India has seen a major shift in their prosperity due to the advances being made in Information Technology with a lot of the progress being made by Indian-born scientists and engineers. Much of this knowledge is paid for very handsomely and studies have shown that Indians today are earning much more than the previous generations of Indians ever did. So with wealth comes the demand for luxury.

As many have noted before, the infrastructure in India is ill-suited to handle the number of cars on the road yet many families have more than one car simply because there is a greater need for it and because people can afford them. Now anyone who knows a little about driving knows that the more time you spend in traffic the less fuel economy you earn. If you are burning gas much faster for less mileage then you're filling up more often. If you're filling up more often and you only have a limited supply of fuel then the costs overall start to rise. Is it making more sense now why the fuel prices around the world are on the rise? Now again, I'm not blaming India; heaven knows we have enough culprits in our own country for something like rising gas prices. Don't believe me? Just count the number of 11-miles-per-gallon-on-the-highway SUVs you see out on the roads these days and that should tell you.

President Bush isn't reputed to be among the smartest economists in the world but then again very few of the world's leaders ever are. Perhaps President Bush meant what he said when he blamed India and perhaps he didn't. Whatever the case, we all need to turn the mirrors on ourselves before we pass the blame on to someone else. For many years there were subsidies provided to farmers to keep them from growing surplus supplies of farm crops. Now there are times when we wonder why we didn't reap the benefits when we could. So are Indians to blame? No. Are Americans to blame? No. Is the international delegation working on Antarctica to blame? Maybe... but most likely no as well. So who's to blame? We all are to blame for the global food crisis, if you want to call it something so dramatic.