India today expressed concern on the diversion of foodgrains to bio-fuel production. At an international forum it firmly rejected the West's point of view that higher consumption in emerging economies was the reason behind the rising global food prices in the world. Supporting FAO findings that the current rise in farm prices commodity prices was not due to higher consumption by emerging economies but diversion of maize and other crops for ethanol production, agriculture minister Sharad Pawar argued that such diversions compromised food security without having any significant impact on fuel scenario. Pawar was speaking at a high-level conference on World Food Security at Rome. Heads of governments and agriculture ministers are participating in the three-day conference at the end of which a declaration to achieve world food security will be adopted. His comments hold significance in view of recent criticism that developing countries were contributing to the food crisis by consuming more. US President George Bush had recently said that prosperity in countries like India had triggered the increased demand for better nutrition, which in turn was leading to higher food prices. Pawar also called for re-examining the use of bio-fuel as an alternative fuel and said additional demand for maize and rapeseed as feed stock for production of ethanol and bio-diesel and high input costs particularly energy prices have had the strongest impact on prices. "Converting all world's grains into ethanol may yield only about 11 per cent of the total world oil demand. Simply put, even if we decided to convert all the world's grain into motor fuel, we will still need a lot of fossil fuel and will not be having anything left to eat,' he contended. He shared with the forum India's success story of feeding 17 per cent of the world's population on less than 5 per cent of the world's water and 3 per cent of the arable land and said India's emphasis on farm sector had started giving dividends, relating the country record production and procurement this year. "We have a foodgrain production of over 227 million tonne in 2007-08 with record rice and wheat output rising to more than 175 million metric tonne. Procurement for public distribution has already touched 47 million metric tonne. The increase in rice and wheat rates in India has remained at a moderate 7 and 8 per cent against 161 and 76 per cent elsewhere in the world,' he added.