India could help soothe global food worries - economist

By Jonathan Leff and Mayank Bhardwaj

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - 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, 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.

"Today we have a great opportunity to produce for ourselves and for others," M.S. Swaminathan, father of the late 1960s Green Revolution that helped reverse growing gloom about world food supplies, told Reuters in an interview.

But he said that public policy was a crucial ingredient in realising India's potential as a world exporter, and that he was dissatisfied with the government's pace of reform so far.

At the moment India is coming under pressure for worsening the world's food fears by banning exports of rice, a move that helped trigger a near threefold rise in global prices.

On Sunday U.S. President George W. Bush said India was partly responsible for rising global food prices, provoking a backlash from Indian politicians, who retorted that the U.S. policy of promoting corn-based ethanol in motor fuel supplies has had bigger impact on world food prices.

Both India and China are eating more protein-rich foods like beef, which requires more grain as feed, Swaminathan said.

He said India could limit the impact on world markets by encouraging more people to eat long-neglected local grains like millets, a cereal rich in protein.