IT WOULD be wrong to suggest that the prevailing food crisis has taken the world by complete surprise. It was predicted that the global grain demand would be dictated by food habits and that empty stomachs would have to compete with the demand for livestock feed fuelled by the rich people’s preference for meat. Meanwhile, since the turn of the century, one more factor has emerged to further grain demand, a factor which could not have been foreseen even a decade ago. Ethanol, accounting for 90 per cent of global biofuel production, is claiming more land and a higher share of global grain production as demand for biofuel grows in the United States and the European Union. Studies show that the 100 litres of ethanol needed to fill the tank of a sports utility vehicle require some 240 kilograms of corn, enough to feed a person for the entire year.
   Food crisis has been the focus of attention for quite some time now and is predictably ascribed to the combination of three factors – higher demand of corn as animal feed and raw material for biofuel, high price of oil and climate change. On May 2, the US president, George W Bush, however, almost squarely blamed the crisis on the changing food habits in India and China. Simply put, he suggested that the generally increasing preference for meat in these two countries was behind the crisis. Remarks, such as this, are symptomatic of the US’s habitual state of denial and refusal to accept that the food crisis, to a large part, is its own doing and that it has played a significant role through lavish subsidies and protection.
   Food habits of the American people – the most gregarious most eaters as they are – are possibly more responsible than those in any other countries. As far back as in 1998, just before the US Independence Day, the Worldwatch Institute on July 2 warned that the rich people’s preference for meat would eventually impact food availability for the poor. Research, based on the data of the US Department of Agriculture, showed that meat consumption by the poorer nations, although rising, was only a third of that by the industrialised countries – a per capita consumption of 24 kilograms compared to 72kgs per year. ‘In backyards across the United States, the 4th of July holiday is one of the biggest meat-eating days of the year,’ wrote the Washington DC-based independent research organisation. According to its statement, more than 200 million Americans – three-quarters of the population – would attend or host a barbecue that weekend.
   This indulgence, Worldwatch stated, was not limited to Independence Day. ‘Americans are eating more meat than ever before –the average American consumes nearly twice his or her weight in meat each year.’ Worldwatch had warned then, ‘In a world where an estimated one in every six people goes hungry each day, the politics of meat consumption are increasingly heated, since meat production is an inefficient use of grain-the grain is used more efficiently when consumed directly by humans. Continued growth in meat output is dependent on feeding grain to animals, creating competition for grain between affluent meat eaters and the world’s poor.’
   Based on recent projections of the US agriculture department, as of April 2008, the average American would be eating about 88 kilograms of beef and broiler, the average European would eat 34.41kgs, the Chinese would eat 15.31kgs and the Indian only 3.87kgs. Including pork the figures come to about 78kgs for the European, 49kgs for the Chinese and 119kgs for the American. As for food grain – rice, wheat and corn – approximate per capita consumption according to the same data sources show that it is 282kgs for China, 159kgs for India, 372kgs for Europe (accounting for wheat and corn only) and a mind boggling 998kgs for the United States.
   To quote from the Daily Telegraph of India, published May 4, fielding a question on the current food crisis, George Bush had said, ‘Just as an interesting thought for you, there are 350 million people in India who are classified as middle class. That is bigger than America. Their middle class is larger than our entire population. And when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food. And so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up.’ The previous week, US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, had also ascribed the current food crisis to the ‘improvement in the diets of people, for instance, in China and India’. Even an attempt to point out how ridiculous the statements were would be dignifying them. Besides the nation’s propensity to consume food, the United States has further contributed to the global food crisis by propping up, by means of state support, the unfeasible production of biofuel.
   Federal subsidies to corn growers to bolster the US ethanol programme, apparently there are more than 200, cost some $7 billion in 2007. Additionally, there is an import tariff on imported ethanol that prevents the more efficient Brazilian product, made out of sugarcane rather than starch, from entering the US in large volumes. Recent reports in international and American media point out that corn production has been on a dramatic increase for a few years registering almost 22.5 per cent increase of maize acreage in the United States reaching 86.5 million acres in 2007/08 while maize production has increased by 25 per cent reaching some 332 million tonnes with a 24 per cent increase, according to the US Department of Agriculture. It is this sudden increase of ‘industrial’ demand for grain that has put pressure on global grain supplies unlike food habits that have grown steadily over the past few years. As per a recent energy bill, supported by the Democratic Congress, which only strengthened an older bill backed by the Republican Congress, about 10 per cent fuel for American cars would have to come from ethanol by 2015, which would be well over 50 billion litres of ethanol with about 35 billion litres produced in 2007.
   In other words, this single act of US legislation would deprive about 350 million people from a year’s sustenance. On May 4, the USAID mission director in Bangladesh, Denise Rollins, did acknowledge that biofuel production might have something to do with the food crisis; however, she suggested that there would hardly be any immediate policy shift of the United States in this regard. Although Rollins indicated that there might be changes in the offing under a different regime expected to take over in January next year, it is still unlikely that there would be any substantial change to the US policy on ethanol. It is backed by presidential hopefuls of the Democratic and Republican parties simply because of the commercial interests behind it. Already in the United States, companies are investing billions of dollars in corn-based ethanol plants and ethanol pipelines that would carry it from major production sites like Iowa to commercial centres like New York.
   Both the US and the European Union have plans to boost use of biofuels for their cars, given the high prices of fossil fuel. But although billed as a source of ‘green’ or cleaner energy, the carbon footprint – the amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere, worsening global warming and hastening climate change – of corn ethanol production is in fact equal or more than that of fossil fuel consumption. Thus, the net impact tends towards the negative – environmentally, socially and economically.
   Price of corn and other agricultural produce have risen to such levels that farmers in the United States will soon plant on their ‘parcels’ of land set aside under the ‘conservation reserve programme’ that actually paid farmers for not planting anything on that patch of land while the European Union has actually suspended its equivalent programme that paid farmers to keep empty patches of land. Furthermore, rich farmers are buying land in other countries and plan to expand crop cultivation there clearing off thicker foliage and in the process adding to the global carbon footprint. Much of this might not have happened without the sudden growth of industrial demand for grain, which is continuously pushing up the prices.
   Costlier food simply means that poor countries that are net food importers would have to pay higher prices and their governments can only subsidise food up to a point, which means that the public in those are bound to suffer from the effects of high prices spiked by the biofuel demand. Although farmers gain from higher grain prices, since the number of net grain importers is almost 10 times higher than the net exporters, the overall result is negative. The negative impacts are evident in Bangladesh, a net importer of food grains, where on May 7 garment workers demonstrated on the streets demanding higher wages and reports have it that some shops were even looted – a sign of desperation born out of hunger.
   There is little chance that these industrialised nations would change their food habits. They would not be asked to by their politicians either since that would virtually mean a political suicide for whoever broaches the subject. Instead the world would hurtle towards making the already skewed distribution of food even more skewed not just by increasing meat consumption but by turning it into fuel. Multilateral lending agencies, along with global bodies and the World Trade Organisation, would in the meantime go on a hyper drive preaching that more ‘liberalisation’ and opening up of the grain markets is the only answer to avoid ‘distortion’, essentially preventing the poorest countries and net food importers from adopting appropriate policies to insulate themselves from the global food market in the interest of their food security.
   Once such a regime is in place, poor countries or major grain producers would not be allowed to block exports to maintain domestic stocks since it would not conform to the holy principle of a free market, free trade regime. The richer countries, on their part, would not baulk at paying the exorbitant prices that exporters might be allowed to fix for their grain. They will be allowed to make fortunes from their produce but would not be allowed to refuse selling it. The policies adopted by the European Union and the United States appear to hinge on that primary presumption that they would always have the resilience to buy their food no matter what the price. Just as in Bangladesh, there are biofuel projects starting up in different pockets of the country while the people are being told to change their eating habits. Just as in the international market, the politically powerful urban elite will retain the ability to buy their food no matter what the price, while arable land is slowly, but surely, devoted to cash crops and non-food production.