Asian rice crisis starts to bite

[Demeter]

Source: Al Jezeera

Cambodia has become the latest Asian country to impose restrictions on exports of rice – the staple food for half the world's population. The government announced the two-month export ban to ensure "food security" on Thursday, blaming surging overseas demand – particularly in Africa and the Middle East - for the skyrocketing cost of rice. Worldwide rising demand has seen rice stocks plummet to their lowest in about three decades, with average prices doubling over the last five years.

Earlier this month the UN secretary general warned that global food stocks had fallen to their lowest level in decades, driving prices up and threatening millions with starvation. That is worrying governments – especially in the poorer Asian nations where a rise of even a few cents can for millions mean a difference between surviving or going hungry.

Earlier this month, the rising cost of rice brought protesters onto the streets of the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. And recently the Philippines, the world's top importer of rice, asked Vietnam, the world's number two exporter, to guarantee supplies. Already many rice farmers in the Philippines are being extra vigilant about their planting techniques, saying they cannot afford to loose a single grain come harvest. The government is trying to play down the problem, but farmers say the country is facing a serious supply crisis. "The population of the Philippines is growing, now its 87 to 90 million people," Jimmy Tadeo of the National Rice Farmers Council told Al Jazeera. "But the use of land for rice is shrinking. The government has not prepared for this dilemma." Filipinos consume nearly 12 million tones of rice each year but the government's National Food Authority says it is finding it increasingly hard to source supplies. The Philippine rice industry says the global crisis is just one part of the problem.
Other significant factors, it says, are a slowdown in domestic production and corruption in the supply chain. Rice shortages have been politicised in the Philippines and could well be once again.



Read more: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/CB6E8E48-C288-4066-90B8-8F23DFDCDFEE.htm

[jwirr]

1. Is this because imports are undercutting the local farmers or has it

got to do with the genetic crops?

[alfredo]

2. Demand up.

[Hannah Bell]

5. Take a look at the figures for Chinese & global consumption. (the revision is 7/12)

Chinese consumption dropped every yer 2002-2007.

World consumption is just a little over what it was in 2003-2004.

2007 was a record crop.

Where's the big jump in demand that explains a projected 90% price hike in 4 months?

http://www.usda.gov/oce/commodity/wasde/revisions/CHINA-Rice-2006-Revised.pdf

[SpiralHawk]

7. Speculators.

Just like with oil.

[Hannah Bell]

9. That, oligopoly in the international grain trade (4 traders move 3/4 of grain),

& purposeful removal of small producers from the land, turning them into "consumers" who must pay the market price.

[Hannah Bell]

11. Cargill (largest private US corp) & archer daniels midland being the US members of the

trading oligopoly.

Cargill moves rice from both vietnam & thailand, the 2 largest producers (1/2 of global exports). & of course from the US, which is in the top 4-5. Haven't found the volumes yet.

[alfredo]

15. Could they be changing to corn for Ethanol?

[Demeter]

17. Unlikely. The Crops Need Totally Different Growing Conditions

[alfredo]

19. Corn likes bottomland.

[Hannah Bell]

3. It's because the Phillippines did what Cargill & the US told them to.

Destroyed their domestic rice farm system to become a low-cost US outsourcing shop.

That's why 10% of their GDP is now foreign remittances & they can't feed their people.

"Cargill, the giant U.S.-based agribusiness, together with the U.S. Embassy in Manila, lobbied heavily for RA 8178's passage. The lobbying effort implemented Cargill's belief that "self-sufficiency is not a practical answer to Asia's growing food demand."11 (Daniel Amstutz, a former Chief Executive Officer in Cargill's futures trading and commodities division, played a pivotal role in drafting the UR as the Reagan Administration's Chief Negotiator for Agriculture.12) U.S. threats of trade sanctions for violating UR commitments helped to overcome Philippine congressional resistance to the legislation.13"

http://www.agobservatory.org/library.cfm?refID=23722

[cliss]

4. This is happening world wide.

The problems, as I see them -

1. Too many people. Way too many people; is it 7 billion now?

2. Increasingly volatile weather patterns. Expect to see many more ruined crops, weird weather, storms, hurricanes, flooding. Huge portions of crops could be ruined this year.

3. Oil - restricted supply. Agriculture is one of the most oil-dependent industries. As the price of oil goes up, expect higher prices steadily increasing.

4. I've read that food prices will quintuple. That's 5 fold increase. When that day arrives, we will ALL be going on a diet.

[Hannah Bell]

6. 2007 was a record rice harvest. How does that square with the story of massive crop failures

because of freak weather?

Take a look at the USDa figures for Chinese & global rice consumption. (the revision is 7/12)

Chinese consumption dropped steadily 2002-2007.

World consumption is just a little over what it was in 2003-2004.

2007 was a record crop.

Where's the big jump in demand that explains a projected 90% price hike in 4 months?

http://www.usda.gov/oce/commodity/wasde/revisions/CHINA-Rice-2006-Revised.pdf

[lapfog_1]

20. I'm trying to figure out those tables

The one from June 9, 2006 shows consumption in China steadily increasing for the entire period, while the one dated July 12, 2006 shows consumption spiking in 2001/2002 and then declining.

Nor is there any explanation as to why consumption should decline (associated with population decline, replaced by other food stuffs, ???).

Which of the tables is to be believed? And why?

[Hannah Bell]

22. The july 12 is the revised estimate - the latest theoretically most accurate.

http://www.usda.gov/oce/commodity/wasde/revisions/CHINA-Rice-2006-Revised.pdf

See in the url where it says "revised"

why consumption would go down is - china has been self-sufficient in rice since the 60's. People ate a lot of it because they had a lot, and other kinds of calories were more expensive.

as some became "richer", they substituted other foods for some of those rice calories.

it's a typical phenomenon of modernization - consumption of the staple food declines (per capita) as other foods get cheaper.

and china's birthrate is less than 2/woman, so not a big population expansion.

[OwnedByFerrets]

8. Not all.....

only the serfs.:mad:

[msongs]

10. free birth control pills and condoms for everyone on request nt

[Hannah Bell]

12. Better start in the US. We consume 1/4 of global resources. n/t

[bean fidhleir]

21. Isn't it amazing how birthrate isn't seen as part of the problem (nt)

[Hannah Bell]

23. Which problem? The problem of high prices that price out the poor?

The problem of simplistic media reports?

The problem of oligopoly or speculation?

1/2 the world's export rice is produced in 2 small countries. 30 years ago, different countries produced 1/2 the world's rice.

that should tell you something. there's no shortage of food or productive capacity. They move it around to get the cheaper labor or closeness to markets.

if you're from the US, you use more resources than a family of 20 africans or bangladeshis.

YOU'RE the overpopulation!

[bean fidhleir]

24. Pretty to think so, but the truth of the matter is that we humans have overflowed

Earth's capacity to support us, and are perched on a technological highwire that is already overstressed and about to drop us into the fossil record. That's what the global climate disaster is all about.

If everyone in the USA were to switch to the diet I live on - tofu, vegetables, nuts, and lassi - and ride a pushbike for nearly every trip as I do, that would be wonderful.

But it wouldn't do a damned thing to solve the problem of of starvation in the overpopulated parts of the world because those problems existed long before the US came onto the world stage. Western technology has simply made it possible for MORE people to live on the cusp of starvation.

Starvation in China and India is actually proverbial. In Africa, people living far from western influences have nevertheless killed and eaten most of the non-human wildlife. It's only in the "primitive" tribal cultures that ignore all the "breed! breed!" messages that human population isn't a destructive force.

[Hannah Bell]

25. Not "pretty," but fact. The US, a fraction of the earth's population, does indeed consume 1/4 of

the earth's resources.

Starvation in China & India is "proverbial," yes, but there's been no famine in either country for fifty years, while there were multiple famines during the preceding 50.

Why do you think that is?

"In Africa, people living far from western influences have nevertheless killed and eaten most of the non-human wildlife."

Most of the non-human wildlife in africa are gone? and they were killed for food, by people living "far from western influence"?

show me your source for this information, please, & where these mythical africans live, "far from western influence" yet nevertheless able to decimate the wildlife of the entire continent.

[Hannah Bell]

26. India exported food/ ag product to England during all its famines.

So did Ireland.

"In Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis charts the unprecedented human suffering...caused by a series of extreme climactic conditions in the final quarter of the 19th century. Drought and monsoons afflicted much of China, southern Africa, Brazil, Egypt and India. The death tolls were staggering: around 12m Chinese and over 6m Indians in 1876-1878 alone.

The chief culprit, according to Davis, was not the weather, but European empires, with Japan and the US. Their imposition of free-market economics on the colonial world was tantamount to a "cultural genocide".

These are strong words. Yet it's hard to disagree with them after reading Davis's harrowing book. Development economists have long argued that drought need not lead to famine; well-stocked inventories and effective distribution can limit the damage. In the 19th century, however, drought was treated, particularly by the English in India, as an opportunity for reasserting sovereignty.

A particular villain was Lord Lytton... Lytton believed in free trade. He did nothing to check the huge hikes in grain prices.
Economic "modernization" led household and village reserves to be transferred to central depots...Much was exported to England...technology allowed prices to be centrally co-ordinated and, inevitably, raised in thousands of small towns.

This was all of little consequence to many English administrators who, as believers in Malthusianism, thought that famine was nature's response to Indian over-breeding.

...While few of us today would defend empire in moral terms, we've long been encouraged to acknowledge its economic benefits. Yet, as Davis points out, "there was no increase in India's per capita income from 1757 to 1947". In Egypt... famine encouraged European creditors to override the millennia-old tradition that tenancy was guaranteed for life. What little relief aid reached Brazil...ended up profiting British merchant houses and the...sugar-planter classes.

It was, says Davis, "a new dark age of colonial war, indentured labour, concentration camps, genocide, forced migration, famine and disease."

"Class" may be passé in academic circles, yet the catalogue of cruelty Davis has unearthed is jaw-dropping. A friend to whom I lent the book was reduced to tears by it. Late Victorian Holocausts is as ugly as it is compelling. But, as Conrad's Marlow said in Heart of Darkness : "The conquest of the earth, which means the taking away from those who have a different complexion and slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look at it too much."

http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/history/0,6121,424896,00.html

[Hannah Bell]

27. In 1981, Sen published Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (1981),

a book in which he demonstrated that famine occurs not only from a lack of food, but from inequalities built into mechanisms for distributing food. Sen's interest in famine stemmed from personal experience.

As a nine-year-old boy, he witnessed the Bengal famine of 1943, in which three million people perished. This staggering loss of life was unnecessary, Sen later concluded. He believed that there was an adequate food supply in India at the time, but that its distribution was hindered because particular groups of people—in this case rural labourers—lost their jobs and therefore their ability to purchase the food.

In Poverty and Famines, Sen revealed that in many cases of famine, food supplies were not significantly reduced. In Bengal, for example, food production, while down on the previous year, was higher than in previous non-famine years. Thus, Sen points to a number of social and economic factors, such as declining wages, unemployment, rising food prices, and poor food-distribution systems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amartya_Sen

[bean fidhleir]

28. Why no Indian/Chinese famines in last 50 years? Technology

More productive strains of rice and wheat; more aggressive, corporatized farming methods; more fertilizers; imports.

In a world where there is little new land to plow, raising the productivity of existing cropland is the key to feeding the 80 million people added each year. It is also essential for protecting the earth's ecosystem. If farmers had not been able to nearly triple land productivity since 1950, it would have been necessary to clear half of the world's remaining forestland for food production. {Forests being our main line of defense against the climate disaster -BF\}

There are at least three ways of raising cropland productivity: raise the yield per crop, increase the number of crops per year through multiple cropping, and get more out of the existing harvest by "processing" crop residues through ruminants to produce meat and milk.

Raising world cropland productivity is becoming progressively more difficult. Over the last century or so, plant breeders dramatically boosted the genetic yield potential of wheat, rice, and corn—the leading grains. At the heart of this effort was an increase in the share of the plant's photosynthate, the product of photosynthesis, going to the seed. While the originally domesticated wheats did not use much more than 20 percent of their photosynthate to produce seed, today's highly productive varieties devote half or more to seed formation. The theoretical upper limit is estimated at 60 percent since the plant's roots, stem, and leaves also require photosynthate.17

Realizing the genetic potential of the new seeds depends on alleviating any nutrient or moisture constraints on yields. Fertilizers are designed to remove the limits imposed by nutrient deficiencies. As cities have grown over the past century, there has been a massive disruption of the nutrient cycle, making it more difficult to return the nutrients in human waste to the land, and leaving the world ever more dependent on fertilizer. In earlier times, when food was produced and consumed locally, nutrients were automatically recycled back onto the land in the form of livestock and human waste. But as cities developed, as the world shifted from a subsistence economy to a market economy, and as international trade expanded, farmers offset the growinsg loss of nutrients with fertilizer.

http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Eco/EEch7_ss3.htm


As for killing off native wildlife, look up "bushmeat". And the late novelist Ross Thomas, a leftist and very good researcher who lived and worked in west Africa for some time, mentioned in passing (i.e., as something saddening but not news) the local extinction of wildlife for food in his excellent 1967 political novel "Seersucker Whipsaw", set in the fictional west-African country of Albertia.

[Hannah Bell]

29. Technology?

Ireland grew plenty of food during the potato famine. It was shipped to England, using the "technology" you speak of.

India grew lots of food during the Bengal famine (1943) & had plenty of "technology". The technology was used to move food to England & starve the Indian countryside.

There was "technology" in china 1907, 1916, 1928, 1929, 1936, 1940, 1942, 1943, 1959. It didn't miraculously appear in 1961, the last famine year.

Last time I checked there were still animals in africa, & there were even more in 1968. If there are fewer today, it's not because they've been killed by some jungle dwellers "far from western influence".

Much of africa has a lower pop density than the us. Much of africa is subject to western influence, & has been for a long time.

[Juche]

30. Technology plays a major role in India

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4994590.stm

The 1968 Green Revolution saw annual wheat production rise from 10 million tonnes to 17 million virtually overnight, and continue to increase to a point where it now stands at 73 million tonnes.


I assume hydroponics will play a larger role if these food shortages continue. Since world pop. is set to be about 9 billion in the next 30 years, we need to explore more agriculture technology.

[Hannah Bell]

32. India never had serious, widesprea famine after independence (1947).

Before that, it had them regularly.

So where were the expected famines 1947-1968? Before the green rev?

i wonder why you won't acknowledge the point. Before independence, the british controlled indian ag. They ran large export plantations on the best land for tea, cotton, & foodstuffs. The money went to the British owners & exporters, & a pittance to the landless workers - who couldn't afford food.

In 1880, India had 9000 miles of railroad connecting the major cities & ports to the countryside. technology. to aid export of resources.

[Juche]

35. That is because of the green revolution

Borlaug helped double and triple agriculture productivity in the 60s

http://www.indiaonestop.com/Greenrevolution.htm

"However, the term "Green Revolution" is applied to the period from 1967 to 1978. Between 1947 and 1967, efforts at achieving food self-sufficiency were not entirely successful. Efforts until 1967 largely concentrated on expanding the farming areas. But starvation deaths were still being reported in the newspapers. In a perfect case of Malthusian economics, population was growing at a much faster rate than food production. This called for drastic action to increase yield. The action came in the form of the Green Revolution."

I do not know what role independence played in famine from 47-67 though, but the reason India hasn't starved since the 60s is the green revolution.

[Hannah Bell]

36. yes, isolated starvation deaths. not millions, which was the case

before.

independence changed the distribution of resources.

that was when population growth boomed in india.

[Hannah Bell]

31. Congo, for example is a large, resource-rich country with a

population density of ~12/km2 (v. ~300/km2 in germany, 34/km2 in the US).

Too bad they've had decades of proxy wars (US & other first world players) which has killed over 4 million people.

If wildlife are disappearing, maybe that's part of the reason, ya think?

But no, according to folks like you, it's "overpopulation".

You're consuming resources from africa this very instant. They're in your computer. Supplied by multinational corps, from congo.

[bean fidhleir]

33. You seem to be confused. Technology is not an unmixed blessing.

It gives and it takes. But, while it can continue to take until the last fish is eaten, the last tree cut down, and the last drop of water and inch of soil contaminated, it cannot continue to give unless people stop over-breeding. This is guaranteed.

We've already brought the gigantic Georges Bank breeding grounds to the point of collapse; people haven't been able to find a tuna in polluted Tokyo Bay for ages; a dead zone the size of New Jersey at the mouth of the Mississippi is only one of over 120 such zones that each summer wipe out every living water dweller that can't flee for it's life; we're driving many mammalian species to extinction (the orangs are one of the saddest cases); we've stripped Earth's forest cover to the point that greenhouse gases are now changing the climate into something humans have never had to endure in our species's history; the southern ocean can no longer absorb carbon; the glaciers are vanishing that have been around since long before our species appeared and that hold our drinking water....

None of this would be happening if we'd started strict human population control worldwide even as recently as 50 years ago. But religious lunatics, chauvinist ethnic groups, rapacious capitalists, and imperialist politicians all continue to resist viciously any such effort.

[Hannah Bell]

37. I agree in the abstract. There are limits to growth.

The fact remains: The first world controls & consumes the majority of the world's resources. It is already at replacement fertility, as is China. Most of the developing world is close.

The high-fertility areas are mostly the poorest of the poor, who use only a small fraction of world resources, & some special cases, i.e. saudi arabia. world fertility is 2.59 children per woman, & declining, on target to zpg before 2050.

But it won't make any difference so long as consumption keeps rising. Yet if it doesn't keep rising, our economic system, which is based on ever-increasing consumption & profit, dies.

If it dies & there's no redistribution & democratization, what we'll have is the worst of all possible worlds. Tyranny + mass poverty.

Even with half the present world population, our economic system of ever-increasing consumption will use up the earth.

[bean fidhleir]

39. I agree that half the current population is still overpopulation

But the idea that most people represent "the poorest of the poor" is only true for any given momentary snapshot. Longitudinally, it becomes evident that they are not interested in remaining "the poorest of the poor" (and of course there can be no justification for expecting them to).

If allowed to, they flood into the more rapacious and consuming countries such as the US to "give their (many) children a better life", while those unable to migrate continue to over-breed. It doesn't take sophisticated statistical instruments to see this process at work. Like climate change, it's evident to casual observation. All we need do is pull aside the veils of liberalist piosity and look. It also doesn't take sophisticated tools to project the outcome if such migration and the overpopulation driving it continues to operate unchecked.


"world fertility is 2.59 children per woman, & declining, on target to zpg before 2050"

I can't find the projection and data you're using. The 2004 UN projection says that zpg won't occur til 2075, and there's no guarantee that their assumptions are meaningful since only 2 years earlier they had an even more optimistic projection. When we consider the effects of US political interference on the IPCC reports, I don't know why we'd want to uncritically accept the UN's population projections.

But let's say they're correct. They're still talking about NINE BILLION people - a FIFTY PERCENT increase over the current overpopulation.

Lovelock believes (iirc) that Earth is already overpopulated by a factor of 10 at least, that a reasonably rich, westernized, and sustainable life can be had by a total population of 600M people at most (this presumes that everyone enjoys that life, not that there are "ten who toil while one reposes").

I've seen other estimates. They vary widely, but the most insanely optimistic ones say we're already over Earth's limit by a factor of 2 or 3. Others say that Earth can't stand more than 300M or so humans.


Lovelock, as everyone should know by now but doesn't, believes that Earth is going to take care of our overpop problem during this century, and that we'll be down to 1G or so by 2100 via starvation, disease, and war as desertification increases and overheating destroys the ability of the world's "breadbaskets" and watersystems to keep everyone going.

The human population explosion since the Neolithic period has been completely dependent on and a function of agriculture, specifically grain agriculture. The UN projections make no mention of any possible collapse, even though the international study group on agriculture says that the US (and corresponding places on other continents, such as Ukraina) will be too hot and dry to grow wheat. Canada will be the southernmost boundary for wheat, unless some new heat- and drought-tolerant strain is developed soon.

Is unchecked disaster preferable to acting humanely but forcefully to avert it?

If as from now we required that no woman worldwide undergo more than one successful pregnancy before sterilization (something the Chinese failed to include in their pop-control law), and that no man impregnate more than one woman before sterilization, we might possibly have a chance of preventing the disaster Lovelock foresees. It would be touch-and-go, but if we also made other changes to support that one (e.g., suppressing pro-breeding propaganda, making the necessities of life human rights rather than profit centers, etc) we might get away with it. I honestly can't think of any other course that offers even that much hope.


When I look around at the complacency we're displaying, I keep thinking of the example of the lake weed that can kill all life in a certain lake in 30 days, and that doubles its capture area every day. On day 10 it doesn't look like a problem at all, and even on day 29 half the lake is still clear.

[Ghost Dog]

13. Didn't you get the memo?

There's a global (above all, essential commodities) economic "war" going on...

[jwirr]

14. Thank you for answering. Do we do anything right in this country?

One becomes depressed just looking out their window.

[DeSwiss]

16. And its getting down right dangerous just to grow the stuff....

Rice Heist Sows Panic Among Farmers

Reuters
By Apornrath Phoonphongphiphat
Mon Mar 24, 12:59 PM ET

BANGKOK - Thai rice farmers are guarding paddy fields and hurrying to bring in their crops after a granary theft last week fuelled rumors of bandits lured by surging rice prices, officials said on Monday.

Reports of widespread paddy theft, although unsubstantiated by police, spread quickly after the theft of 100 kg (220 lb) of premium quality fragrant rice from a farmer's granary in the province of Kalasin, 500 km (310 miles) northeast of Bangkok. "Villagers have set up teams and are patrolling the community," Urit Poo-aob, a district chief in Kalasin, told Reuters by telephone.

The northeast is the key producing region for premium grade fragrant rice in Thailand, the world's biggest rice exporter. Thai rice prices have been rising since late last year when India banned exports of non-basmati rice to ensure it had enough for its own people.

Vietnam, the number two rice exporter, halted exports during March and April in order to meet Filipino contracts. As a result, the price of Thai premium fragrant price has soared 30 percent to nearly $900 a tonne. Thai 100 percent B grade white rice has also risen 30 percent, to $600 a tonne, fuelling rumors of rice bandits swooping on unguarded paddy fields after midnight in search of an easy score.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080324/od_nm/rice_thieves_dc">MORE

- K&R!!!
========================================================================
DeSwiss


http://atheisttoolbox.com/">The Atheist Toolbox

[Hannah Bell]

18. HArvesting rice at night = "easy score"? How much can you grab in 4 hours? n/t

[Solon]

34. I don't know about the design of rice granaries, but silos storing corn...

or grain in the United States would make it really easy to steal at least one, and probably multiple truckloads in well less than an hour. Especially if they are close to capacity. With some planning, you could literally back a pickup truck to the silo wall, puncture it, and then get out of the way as the truck fills up with the corn or grain. The truck would overflow with grain in less than 15 minutes. Have multiple trucks, side by side, around the same silo, and you could probably steal quite a few tons of the stuff in less than an hour. Even more devastating would be just driving off, the silo would literally drain until there's not enough grain inside to maintain the flow. All that grain that sprays out onto the ground would be useless to feed humans, and if it isn't gathered quickly, moisture and scavengers will destroy it quite quickly.

This is just a brainstorm I had, and I'm assuming that rice is stored in some centralized location after harvest, just like corn.

[Hannah Bell]

38. True. Sorry, I read "paddy theft," but neglected to read "granary". n/t