Food Inflation

The increasing food inflation in India sheds light on the economic side that influences food security issues in India today. As major Indian cities begin to embrace the rise in supermarkets year round, which is one of the drivers of food consumption as identified by Kearney (2010), there is a rush to meet the excess demand but supply chains are limited, hence pushing up prices. The inability to meet excess demand by matching supply is shown by the recent increase in onion prices across major Indian cities, which many newspaper publications are reporting on due to the inability to meet demand.

In the past, food inflation has been attributed to “higher energy and chemical input prices, more-frequent-than-usual adverse weather conditions, and the diversion of some food commodities to the production of biofuels” (Baffes and Dennis, 2013: 2). The trends that influence food inflation will have to be continued to be studied in order to understand how to feed the population of the world, which continues to grow, especially in certain parts of the world, such as, India. Furthermore, when considering India, “according to various reports on climate change, the country is expected to face more frequent floods and droughts in the future” (Chand, 2010: 12). Therefore, such changes in the environment reflects the “increasing threats to food supplies (particularly for the poor) from climate change, climate change responses, water shortages, land degradation, the increasing global populations, and increasing demand for grain for animal production” (Dorward, 2011: 4).

To keep food inflation at a low level, we, of course, also need to take strong action to develop and disseminate improved technologies for raising food production (Chand, 2010: 13). This is not only important to ensure that food prices do not fluctuate drastically in order to ensure that that with rising prices, people do not compromise on maintaining adequate food nutrition in their diets. After all, “it is worth paying closer attention to poor nutrition, which results from the lack of well-balanced or diversified diets” (Altman, Hart and Jacobs, 2010: 351).

References

Altman,M., Hart, T.G.B and Jacobs, P.T. 2009 Household food security status in South Africa, Agrekon: Agricultural Economics Research, Policy and Practice in Southern Africa, 48(4):345-361.

Baffes, J., and Dennis, A. 2013. Long-term drivers of food prices.

Chand, R. 2010. Understanding the nature and causes of food inflation. Economic and Political Weekly, 45(9), 10-13.

Dorward, A. 2011. Getting real about food prices. Development policy review, 29(6): 647-664.

Kearney, J. 2010. Food consumption trends and drivers. Philosophical transactions of the royal society B: biological sciences, 365(1554): 2793-2807.

Broaching the Topic of Food

So the other day I was thinking about food and how my relationship with food changes over time. There will be times when I will just sit down and eat what has been laid down in front of me or will just pick and choose something from the menu that looks vaguely familiar. However, there will be times when I want to eat something – to have my taste buds come alive and truly feel the taste of something new. Yet, I also experience another stage whereby I don’t want to eat food prepared by myself or by those who I have been accustomed to. Instead, I want to eat food made by the standing, shining example of globalization – Domino’s or maybe splurge a little and go eat at a nice, upcoming restaurant. However, when all is said and done – I should just be happy that I have an appetite at all and furthermore, some food available to satisfy my appetite and that too, clean, hygienically-prepared food.