US eats 5 times more than India per capita
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Even as the world spins into a global food crisis, a popular theory — voiced by the likes of US President George W Bush and secretary of state Condoleezza Rice — is that the Chinese and Indians are responsible. The ‘logic’: due to zooming incomes, they are eating more, causing worldwide shortages. But is that true?
Due to their huge populations, countries like India and China may appear to consume gigantic amounts of food. But the real elephant in the room that nobody is willing to talk about is how much each person gets to eat. And the answer will shock many.
Total foodgrain consumption — wheat, rice, and all coarse grains like rye, barley etc — by each person in the US is over five times that of an Indian, according to figures released by the US Department of Agriculture for 2007.
Each Indian gets to eat about 178 kg of grain in a year, while a US citizen consumes 1,046 kg.
In per capita terms, US grain consumption is twice that of the European Union and thrice that of China. Grain consumption includes flour and by conversion to alcohol.
Couldn’t tell if the grain figures also included the amount of grain fed to the cattle to produce the huge amounts of beef that they consume over here. Almost every restaurant serves portions large enough for 2 meals out here. Luckily, they also encourage people to take home what they don’t finish so you really can make it last a couple of meals if you want to.
I was once, long ago, lucky enough to hear Herman Kahn speak. One of the points that he made was that if we rely only on a diet of grain and we have a bad harvest, people will starve and die (mitigated only by our ability to keep edible reserves in place). However, a nation that puts a significant portion of its food production into cattle (production of 1 lb of meat requires about 10 lb of grain) can, in famine years, cut back a bit on its herds (eat more meat than usual) and get by with relatively little starvation.
When I when thru a phase of playing Sim City, I noticed in myself an inclination to grade my success not on the happiness of the people (which the game computed and made available to me) but rather on the sheer number of people I could cram into the play space. I have since then tried to restrain my propensity to favor behaviors that encourage lots of people living subsistence lifestyles rather than fewer people living comfortably.
I recognize that spending & comfort need not be equated. But I do like a shower each day and to not feel starved all the time. Maybe I’m a bad person, but that’s me.
In spite of all the good resolutions, I still contribute to local food banks. Can’t help it. But I don’t support crusades against human comfort.