Supply and demand abroad for commodities, not U.S. monetary policy, are causing higher food and energy prices rattling much of the world, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Thursday.

“The most important development globally is that the world is growing more quickly, particularly in emerging markets,” Bernanke said in response to a question after his speech at the National Press Club.

As economies in Asia grapple with high inflation, Bernanke said constraints on supply — such as bad weather — along with increased demand are to blame for pushing up prices for food commodities.

Strong growth in emerging economies is moving millions of people from poverty to the middle class, changing their eating habits — “more beef and less grains and so on,” Bernanke said.

The Fed’s policies are aimed at growing the domestic economy and “to address stability in the United States,” he said. For some foreign countries facing high inflation, “their policies have not been such to keep growth and capacity in balance,” he said.

“I think it’s entirely unfair to attribute excess demand in emerging markets to U.S. monetary policy,” Bernanke said. Those nations can use their own monetary policy and adjust exchange rates to deal with their inflation problems, he said. “It’s really up to emerging markets to find appropriate tools to balance their own growth.”

Still, higher oil prices in particular do present risks to the U.S. They act as a tax, eating up consumers’ incomes at a time when the Fed is “trying to get consumers more confident,” Bernanke said. While overall inflation in the U.S. “is quite low,” he said, higher commodity prices would become a problem if they feed into wages or broader goods and services.