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The Blame Game: Who is Behind the World Food Price Crisis?

World prices for basic staples have skyrocketed - up 83 percent compared to three years ago - while hunger and destitution reaches record levels. Skyrocketing prices have been blamed on a variety of factors, including high fuel costs, bad weather in key food producing countries, and the diversion of land to biofuels. Increased emphasis, however, has been placed on a surge in demand from emerging economies like India and China.

Comments from Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, "improvement in the diets of people in India and China," is forcing the governments there to keep food "inside" is a cause for the current global supply shortage, were followed by President Bush's statement who specifically took the case of Indian middle class to argue that its demand for better nutrition was a factor in pushing the global food prices up.

China and India grew at 11.4 percent and 9.2 respectively in 2007. With both nations occupying the top slots for population, with over a billion people each and accounting for nearly a third of world's population it seems highly probable that a mass consumption in these two countries could be well poised to create a food crisis.

The Blame Game: Who is Behind the World Food Price Crisis, however, reveals otherwise. It shows how presenting the food price crisis in terms of an imbalance between demand and supply and to hand pick a few countries responsible for it, is a convenient oversimplification of the causes. On one hand, it takes the scrutiny off structural causes of the crisis, such as the trade liberalization policies that have wreaked destruction on the agricultural base of the developing countries. And on the other, it helps promote the notion that policies based on free trade, deregulation and privatization, have not only created spectacular national growth in developing nations but also improved the standard of living of their citizens. This new Policy Brief from the Oakland Institute makes the case that the image of a well-fed India does not hold scrutiny and that increased demand does not equal increased purchasing power of the people. It is instead a reflection of the destruction of country's agricultural base and its farmers under economic policies promoting free markets and liberalization of agriculture.

Click Here To Download the Policy Brief

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See other Briefing Papers, Policy Briefs by the Oakland Institute at www.oaklandinstitute.org

* WTO's Doha Round Will Not Solve the Global Food Crisis : Civil Society Calls for Real Solutions: A letter signed by nearly 250 civil society groups, farmer organizations, trade unions and social movements.

* India's Export Ban on Foodgrains: A Measure to Ensure Availability of Food for its Poorest Citizens

* Dangerous Liaisons: A Battle Plan from the UN and the International Financial Institutions to Fight Global Hunger

* Agriculture: Overhaul of Agriculture Systems Needed

* The Status of International Food Aid Negotiations

* Food Price Crisis: A Wake Up Call for New Policies to Eradicate Hunger

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