"Apparent improvement" in the diets of people in India and China and consequent food export caps is among the "four causes" that has led to the current global food crisis, feels US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. The US' top diplomat specifically pointed to exchange rate and the simple "inability" of getting food to the people as being responsible for the worrisome food scarcity. "There are, kind of, four causes that we really have to look at. We have got to understand better what is happening in some conflict areas in terms of the distribution of food. It is obvious that there are places like Sudan, where we have had a sudden uptick in the inability to distribute food," Ms Rice said, giving her assessment of global food shortages during an interactive session at the Peace Corps 2008 Country Directors Conference. The top Bush administration official said, "We obviously have to look at places where production seems to be declining and declining to the point that people are actually putting export caps on the amount of food. "Now, some of that is not so much declining production as apparent improvement in the diets of people, for instance, in China and India, and then pressures to keep food inside the country. So, that's another element that we have to look at," she said. The "incredible cost" that fuel prices, everything from fertiliser to transportation costs, was bringing on the ability to distribute or to get food to people, was also a cause. "Biofuels", which was "not a large part of the problem, but it may, in fact, be a part of the problem," she said.