This Day in Food Crisis - Rising Rice Prices Spark Concern Across Asia

I believe this is now the 4th article this week alone on this subject - SOS. SOS. Again, my focus keeps turning to the social strife angle - as this article highlights. We just talked about the Philippines last week [Mar 19: Philippines Brace for Rice Shortage] Food shortage is very different from energy shortage - many of the world's poor don't use any central power source... food? Well that's sort of necessary. I feel like we are whistling past the graveyard - much like the equity market is doing... our "World of Shortages" theme only grows...

And once again, watch for agflation to lead to "food protectionism" - Cambodia is the latest to restrict exports - following China, following some of the former USSR satellites that I cannot spell correctly... etc.

• Philippine activists warn about possible riots. Aid agencies across Asia worry how they will feed the hungry. Governments dig deeper every day to fund subsidies. A sharp rise in the price of rice is hitting consumer pocketbooks and raising fears of public turmoil in the many parts of Asia where rice is a staple.
• Part of a surge in global food costs, rice prices on world markets have jumped 50 percent in the past two months and at least doubled since 2004. Experts blame rising fuel and fertilizer expenses as well as crops curtailed by disease, pests and climate change. There are concerns prices could rise a further 40 percent in coming months.
• The higher prices have already sparked protests in the Philippines, where a government official has asked the public to save leftover rice and communist rebels have vowed to take advantage of the situation to stir up public unrest.
• In Cambodia, Prime Minister Hun Sen ordered a ban on rice exports Wednesday to curb rising prices at home. Vietnamese exporters and farmers are stockpiling rice in expectation of further price increases.
• Prestoline Suyat of the May One Labor Movement, a left-wing workers group, warned that "hunger and poverty may eventually lead to riots."
• The neediest are hit hardest. Rodolfo de Lima, a 42-year-old parking lot attendant in Manila, said "my family will go hungry" if prices continue to rise. "If your family misses a meal, you really don't know what you can do, but I won't do anything bad," said de Lima, whose right foot was amputated after he was shot during a 1985 gang war.
• "There are people who are hotheaded," he said. "When people get trapped, I can't say what they will do."
• The U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts global rice stocks for 2007-08 at 72 million tons, the lowest since 1983-84 and about half of the peak in 2000-01.
• Jack Dunford, head of a consortium in Thailand helping more than 140,000 refugees from military-ruled Myanmar, said soaring rice prices and a slumping U.S. dollar are forcing cuts in already meager food aid. "This rice price is just killing us," he said. "This is a very vulnerable group of people under threat."
• Rice prices have almost doubled in Bangladesh in just a year, sparking resentment but no unrest yet. Repeated floods and a severe cyclone last year have cut production, forcing the government to increase imports.
• Farmers there say they are not benefiting from the higher prices. "The rice price has gone up 50 percent over the past three months, but I'm not making any more money because I have to pay double for fertilizer, insecticides and labor costs," said Nguyen Thi Thu, 46, a farmer in Ha Tay province, just outside Hanoi. (My advice is to form a powerful lobby, and buy the lawmakers influence with political contributions - it works wonders here!)
• Things are so tight that Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap has asked people not to throw away leftover rice and urged fast-food restaurants, which normally give customers a cup of rice with meals, to offer a half-cup option to cut waste.
• Philippine farmers say the country, which has become the world's largest importer of rice after being an exporter in the early 1970s, has shot itself in the foot by developing some former rice paddies for housing and golf courses and planting more lucrative crops on others. (I keep saying, if I could invest in farmland across the world I would - it's going to be a very valuable commodity in the coming decades)
  

Stories like this sort of makes our farm subsidies look even more outrageous - I wonder if the farmers who are traveling to Washington to show lawmakers "a dose of in-your-face reality" [Mar 27: WSJ: Farm Lobby Beats Back Assault on Farm Subsidies] would like to trade their reality with the reality of an average human in one of these countries that they have never heard of... somehow I think not.