What is responsible for the bulk of the food price increase?
Liberalisation in agriculture will increase the average price for food, but also its volatility.
As many in China remain impoverished, an increase in the price of food represents a significant decrease in the standard of living for the average Chinese individual.
But Oxfam has been criticised for failing to point out that any reduction in subsidy for farmers would be likely to lead to an increase in the price of food in the shops.
It might be too early to call a serious slowdown in the Chinese recovery as the latest data may have been affected by the Lunar New Year, a period that is often associated with a sharp increase in the price of food and other goods, which occurred in January in 2012 and February in 2013.
In his own budget speech, India's finance minister, Jaswant Singh, proposed a modest dent in the subsidies poured into both food and agriculture by announcing an increase in the price of fertiliser.
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Mr Knott believed a further factor to the increase in demand was the price of food.
According to Moody's, the average increase in the World Bank's commodity food price index for emerging countries was 3% year-over-year in the past 12 months, when India's index of wholesale food prices rose 10%.
The increase was mostly due to a 2.1% increase in energy costs, including a 4.7% increase in the cost of gasoline, and rising food prices, including a 13.6% increase in the price of fresh fruit and melons.
With the price of beef and other food costs going up, a steep rent increase just wasn't feasible, he said.
Even if food companies face higher costs, their first reaction is almost never to increase the retail price of their goods.
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