The day after news channels and politicians got their combined knickers in a twist about George Bush’s comments on India’s food consumption contributing to rising prices some interesting stats :
Figures released by the US Department of Agriculture for 2007 say each Indian eats only 178 kg of grain in a year, while a US citizen consumes 1,046 kg.
Likewise, milk consumption per person per year is 36 kg in India, while in the United States is 78 kg. While each American consumes 45.5 kg poultry meat per year, an Indian takes in only 1.9 kg.
Besides, while the US per capita grain consumption rose from 946 kg in 2003 to 1,046 kg in 2007, India’s per capita consumption remained static during this period.
I am too lazy to do primary research. I am sure that Arab News has not made up the figures and it comes from the correct primary source. (aside – ToI carried a similar piece yesterday, here.
I also think that while Bush is an ass and a moron, he has been taken out of context and hammered, and this is not a new phenomenon for the Indian media. They did that to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh not so long ago when they went to town with ‘PM says that Musllims must have first claim on resources. ‘
Your politically correct self will never call another leader of a nation — “an ass and a moron”; it’s a claim I make and I will stick to it. Think Hu Jintao, Manmohan Singh, Musharaff, Mugabe, Brown, Sarkozy, Lula, Mbeki or any recognizable leader for that matter.
Now, tell me — what is it that Bush has done which these leaders have not. And why is it acceptable to denigrate the President of the United States of America.
he invaded iraq and is still there 🙂
you want to f***up your own country and your people let you … great…
you want to invade another country in the name of God, Oil, Democracy … you become open target for ridicule !
u do what u think is right…..even the UN acts as ur subordinate….dunno what kinda leader are u.might be u r a damn good leader but i see u doin no good to ur own land..well du take care Mr Bush
So, military aggression is your yardstick.
While I don’t understand how invading Iraq bother you personally, let me also know why Bush is any different from his four predecessors — Clinton, Bush Sr, Regan and Carter (let’s live in a post Vietnam world). All of them, if the yardstick you have applied is to be extended, are an ass and a moron.
Let’s also look at Rajiv Gandhi, Vajpayee and Indira Gandhi. Your yardstick suggests they are an ass and a moron. So can it be extended to all Chinese Premiers and all Russian Presidents. And you may call the Presidents of Ecuador, Venezuela and Colombia that as well. In short, apart from possibly a few Nordic countries, every other countries’ President qualifies in some way or the other.
My question was not about why Bush, but more about why hold Bush to standards you don’t seem to hold for others. And I suspect, your pet grouse, media portrayal, has some influence on your judgment.
I meant “bothers” and “country’s”. Excuse the typos.
No
No- because every nation and every people have the right to their leaders (whether elected or imposed). If the leaders screw up internally, it is upto the people to get them out…. and it has happened enough times. So Bush or Blair aren’t idiots because they mismanaged their countries … they are idiots because they exported their mismanagement. And their mismanagement has had repercussions on the world economy .. especially the price of fuel. And I consume fuel. If that sounds selfish, so be it 🙂
I hold that a lot of US presidents were ruthless — but none of them brought their nation to its knees or made the world so unstable with their antics… Bush is an ass and a moron because he has done both.
Winners aren’t asses and morons, losers are…. and the US military involvement in Iraq & Afghanistan under Bush II is a disaster.
Bush I was sensible, he invaded IRaq but didn’t stay … and he came out of the mess smelling of roses and as a liberator. So did Thatcher. Bush II and Blair … f***ed up by invading without reason and then staying on …. and now it is such a mess that they cannot get out…And, their invasion has made the world a more polarised place.
Clinton’s presidency was like Bush I – he was callous, ruthless … but he wasn’t an ass.Be it in Kosovo or in Somalia.
History is going to be a lot more unkind to Bush II than i was —
I was too young to remember Vietnam …. but who ever got them out —did their nation a service… whoever got them in was an idiot and a moron :
Indira Gandhi won …( i assume that you are referring to Bangladesh ) and therefore is a heroine.
Rajiv Gandhi was an idiot to get the IPKF into Sri Lanka …. But, he was sensible enough to get out … and besides his murder has probably washed away his ‘sins’ ……. Vajpayee didn’t invade anyone… he was right in exploring the nuclear option. He was an ass when it came to Gujarat and Modi…..
The Soviets lost. Their country broke apart. So yes, they were a bit stupid in invading Afghanistan and trying to keep the Eastern Bloc under their military thumb. They are but a pale shadow of their former might and power.
China has only Tibet and the status of Tibet is a bit murky ….. And, i am not quite sure how long repression is going to work in their case … there are reports of riots all over the place ..from various Chinese provinces.
So which part of the post are you objecting to ? or is it that you want a debate… either is cool. but, if i have to debate more, then i have to read up ….:)
So, you have now changed your yardstick to military aggressions that failed. Then one has to define what failure is — your subjective judgments will not do.
The point I am trying to make is, though Bush maybe a very unpopular President, he hasn’t done something so spectacularly different from several past Presidents of his own country and the various Presidents of various countries around the world at different points in history.
The liberal media decided that he was an idiot and has been repeating that for eight years now. He won two elections based exactly on that — what the elite like to call dumbness and what voters probably call likability.
I don’t have problem with calling someone names — I do that all the time. But you don’t do it — and somehow, it it has become acceptable for even folks like you to denigrate the American President. I personally don’t have a problem with that — but I just don’t buy your rationale that he is so bad and so devious and so catastrophically idiotic that he can be singled out.
failure makes him a target. if he had succeeded, if they had found WMD’s, if Iraq & Afghanistan was peaceful and ‘democratic’, atleast I wouldn’t be calling him names.
Media – liberal or otherwise — loves to label people, and let the label continue. A variation of branding : so Clinton is a philanderer, Bush is an ass, Manmohan Singh is wishy washy, Vajpayee is a poet, Modi is a despot, Laloo is rustic, Mayawati is shrill etal. None of these labels are wrong… but none of them gives the whole picture. Maybe the media cannot handle too much complexity. Maybe the audience cannot.
Back to the topic:
The data is available from USDA/ ERS, and refers to 2005 food _availability_ figures. To parse actual _consumption_ numbers, far more interpretation (primary research), than the papers seem to have applied, will be required.
A few billion dollars worth of food is thrown away in the US each year so availability figures are not to be relied on as consumption figures. A growing % of food is also eaten away from home.
Just some sums on consumption (since these are cited as per capita):
1,046 kg grain = 4184000 calories (1gm carb = 4 cal)
78 kg milk = 312000 calories (assuming all skim so taken all carb)
45.5 kg poultry = 182000 calories (1 gm protein = 4 cal)
Now even as this does not take into account the fruit nad veg consumption, the beef and lamb consumption, the nuts/ seeds/ fats consumption and the sugar consumption, this totals to 4678000 calories which works out to over 12800 calories per day of the year being consumed by that average American.
This is not just humanly impossible but also would have, if true, stacked the numbers impossibly in the obesity stats.
I think much as we do not like primary research, we need to question the numbers cited. We owe it to ourselves at least.
Just my tuppence. I am sure you will take it in the spirit intended not otherwise. I have burnt my hands trying to challenge things in the blogosphere before. But you are, in my estimation, different. Thanks.
these are common dished out stats
even the toi has published the same data
sadly they don’t bother to tell us their source
hi Shefaly
thanks for the very detailed post.
i don’t have any knowledge of the sphere, and that combined with laziness prevented me from doing any research…
what you have stated is very enlightening.
after your response i googled for more information … and ended up with stuff that addled my brain even more :
but some of it is interesting and you may be able to make more sense of it than me:
the first of these is from a research paper out of Singapore and it looks at trends in meat & poultry consumption:
http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/papers/people/ssn1q98-pg8-13.pdf
the second is from the USDA on per capita food consumption, found here
http://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Iowa/Publications/Annual_Statistical_Bulletin/2006/06_136.pdf
but, what is confusing is that other reports say that the average american consumes some 3500 calories per day. so where does the rest of the food go.. ..
the only thing that i can think of is that people as in individuals take all the food on the plate and then waste 3 times what they eat … and as someone brought up not to ever waste food (the goddess of food – annapurna – will cry and then there will be drought kind of indoctrination from a very young age)- the mind boggles at such waste !!
Thankyou for the compliment … i would rather debate & be enlightened on a topic I don’t know about than have a fight … the former is so much more fun, the latter such a drag !!
Harini:
You are welcome! I have an unhealthy level of familiarity with these issues, thanks to the PhD.
Food being available (as in agricultural produce etc) and being consumed are two different things. Also because _some_ of the produce also goes to feed livestock. The calories available per capita have steadily increased (see any of Marion Nestle’s writings for data and evidence) in the US in the last 3-4 decades. This is the outcome of several forces at work, including agricultural subsidies, farm lobby, weird state of regulatory capture (think: USDA issues dietary guidelines!) and so on.
Food related choices are also highly modulated by culture. So one country’s choices will always appear weird to others. However travellers as far back as the 18th century have noted that Americans have larger foods (large tomatoes), large portion sizes and eat more. (See Peter Stearns’s Fat History).
At the moment however this is a simplistic explanation of a serious problem which has appeared in a large magnitude and is affecting everyone globally. Since the global food supply is now very interdependent, the effect is more pronounced. Blaming India and China is a bit silly and only an incomplete argument.
Link:
http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/FoodConsumption/
my my my! if we r led by asses and morons, what r we? if we r any better, y arent we out there leading?
bush was not quoted out of context. his remark followed condolesa rice’s about india limiting food exports to take care of her domestic needs.
true, bush told the mississippi audience to go ahead and exploit the increased demand for food in india. but this context, far from condoning bush, puts in perspective his perception of the role of the rest of the world vis a vis USA.as far as he is concerned, the rest of the world can sink or swim, so long as either of these activities doesnt hurt hs country.
Hey, that was quite useful information considering the debate over Bush’s comment going on worldwide. I thought may be factually he had something right to say, but he certainly was saying it worst way possible.
@ kochuthresiamma – hi. absolutely … we get the leadership we deserve…. my pet theory is that in a Republic we merely outsource the power to our representatives and shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking of them as our leaders 🙂
@poonam – welcome to this blog… footinmouthitis has always been a problem with George Bush…:)
@shefaly — thank you for taking the time & effort to explain that…
i just wonder what will happen if in today’s networked world — food producers simply set up an online trading exchange (as opposed to food middlemen or brokers doing the same
Harini:
Eventually food producers’ wares are perishable; which means to make any moeny they depend on their buyers to buy in bulk and to buy quickly, which would be large food manufacturers, supermarkets etc. Commodities exchanges can only serve to ‘collectivise’ the power of smaller producers/ sellers to sell to the major buyers. It will not make much difference to the prices that consumers pay. Because distribution – rapid distribution at that – and storage are still two main value-adding services that these distributors and manufacturers provide.
On Prerna’s blog, I made a point about stockpiling of foods by food manufacturers which I think was misunderstood in that these firms never really get hold of the produce; they buy futures to fix prices for their most needed raw materials.
All in all, it is a complex issue which is why I find the emotive response not just in the blogosphere but also in mainstream media in India difficult to understand.
Nice Post !
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