Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed yesterday underscored the need for diversifying the use of potato through changing food habit to help ensure food security of the country. In a statement, he said it is equally important to create awareness in all tiers of the society alongside carrying out a massive campaign about various recipes of potato to popularise it. The CA appreciated the initiative of organising a three-day potato campaign marking 'International Potato Year 2008', declared by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

The European Union too has jumped on the U.S. bandwagon to target India and China for driving food prices worldwide. EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural development Mariann Fischer Boel on Tuesday said change in dietary habits in India and China was responsible for the spiralling global food prices.

In striving for "efficiency' by means of narrow targeting, households that should be entitled to basic food security through the PDS have been left out.

By holding higher grain consumption in India and China responsible for global food crisis, US President George W Bush and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, have needlessly started a blame game which is so far removed from the facts as to be laughable, which does not improve Mr Bush's already dodgy reputation on sticking to the facts, and which in any case leads the world nowhere in its combat against hunger.

India, now under scrutiny due to rice export curbs and growing consumption that have helped drive grain prices to record highs, could help ease global food security fears, M S Swaminathan, the country's most revered rural economist, said. A rich diversity of secondary food crops, a huge base of rural workers and good rainfall mean India is able to raise production quickly with small investments, allowing it to export a bigger surplus to world markets, he said on Monday.

Global cooperation is the need of the hour.

Allowing four states to import wheat directly from abroad is a move to dismantle the food distribution system. First the Central government allowed global food giants and private companies to buy wheat directly from farmers, thereby deliberately initiating a shortfall in procurement for the Public Distribution System (PDS). It has now directed four states

From the rice paddies of Asia to the wheat fields of Australia, the soaring price of food is breaking the budgets of the poor and raising the spectres of hunger and unrest, experts warn. A billion people in Asia are seriously affected by the surging costs of daily staples such as rice and bread, the director general of the Asian Development Bank, Rajat Nag, has said. "This includes roughly about 600 million people who live on just under a dollar a day, which is the definition of poverty, and another 400 million who are just above that borderline,' he said.

"The global fight against poverty will be won or lost in our region,' Kuroda said in a keynote speech to delegates at the Asian Development Bank's annual meeting. "Soaring food prices are hitting the poor very hard. This price surge has a stark human dimension and has greatly affected over a billion people in Asia and the Pacific alone,' he said. Asia is home to two thirds of the world's poor and risks rising social tension as a doubling of wheat and rice prices in the last year has slammed people who spend more than half their income on food .

United States President George W. Bush joined Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in ascribing the spiralling global food prices to the rising prosperity of India's huge middle class. Prosperity in countries such as India was "good' but it triggered increased demand for "better nutrition' which in turn led to higher food prices, Mr. Bush said. At an interactive session on economy in Missouri, Mr. Bush argued that there were many factors for the present crisis, only one of which was investment in biofuels such as ethanol.