The Times of India
Pasta stir sparked by India? 14 Sep 2007, 0033 hrs IST, Rashmee Roshan Lall, TNN
LONDON: Angry activist consumer groups staged the first-ever nationwide "basta pasta" or no-pasta protests across Italy on Thursday against the rising cost of the Italian staple, but leading pasta-makers have blamed India and China's voracious new appetite for hitting Italy where it really, really hurts: in the stomach.
The day-long pasta protest, also dubbed the spaghetti strike, is reminiscent of Mexico's recent tortilla revolt and seen as a symbol of changing patterns of global consumption, supply and demand. The protest is aimed against buying, but not at eating the humble, well-loved product, which is entwined with Italian national identity and made out of durum wheat and water.
The protest was meant to call attention to the ultimate sacrilege, i.e., the 20% rise in Italian packet prices of fettuccine, linguine, spaghetti, penne, farfalle, rotelle and every other pasta shape known to man. But Marcello Valentini, vice-president of the Union of Industrial Italian Pasta-Makers blamed the price rise and Italian consumers' ire on the "higher demand from fast-growing economies, India and China for European food". He said the global rise in the cost of durum wheat was at least partly because the newly cash-rich and globally-aware Indians and Chinese were displaying gargantuan appetites for meat, noodles and pasta.
The price of durum flour has nearly doubled from 0.26 euro per kg to 0.45 euro in the last two months. India's emerging non-vegetarianism is described by Francesco Bertolini, an economist at Milan's Bocconi University, as a product of improved diets in emerging countries. But it means the world has to put more meat on the global table, which is raising the demand for feed for livestock, Bertolini said.
This comes at a time when rising global demand for bio-fuel and lower crop yields are depleting wheat stocks worldwide and sending grain prices soaring. The Economist soberly reported, "As oil prices stay high, wheat prices hit an all-time peak of over $7.50 a bushel for December delivery. Aside from wheat, the prices of corn, rice and barley have all risen by over a third since 2005."
This has hit Italians not just in the pocket, but more crucially, in the pasta pot. Italian families may now be expected to fork out an estimated extra 10 or 12 eurocents for every pasta packet.
But Valentini of Italy's Pasta-Makers Union is unmoved. "It sounds like quite a lot when you say every pasta packet has a 20% price increase. But in real terms, it's very small, just 10 or 12 cents more. The price increase is justified and we are not worried. Italians love pasta and we are sure they will continue to eat it". Added Luciano Berardi, commercial director of De Cecco, which sells pasta in more than 80 countries, 'basta pasta' is "a symbolic strike, which will have no impact. To say not to eat pasta would be a call to arms. It's the least expensive dish there is".
-- My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of the same poverty. - Jorge Louis Borges