Rice importing countries are being hit by export bans in key producers
|
Rice prices have scaled fresh heights in Asian trade amid concern that export bans by key producers will hit supply.
Rough rice for July delivery touched $24.745 per 100lb for the first time, before falling slightly.
Curbs are in place in India and Vietnam to protect domestic supply and there are fears that Thailand, the world’s largest producer, could follow suit.
The global food crisis is a “silent tsunami” with an extra 100 million people facing poverty, the UN said.
“This is the new face of hunger – the millions of people who were not in the urgent hunger category six months ago, but now are,” said the head of the United Nations’World Food Programme (WFP), Josette Sheeran.
| 
Yeap It worrying everybody. Shortage of food. Production food remains or less. Increasing number of population. Productive land lesser. Higher production cost etc.
For the food, rice is a must for Asian. However due to the most of developing countries give more emphasis on the production of manufactured goods and electronic goods which give impact to GDP while the agriculture sector became less important. Make it less popular for the people to be involves with as works in the manufacturing industries provides steady incomes. The government should focus on the agriculture industry too. Food is important international commodity nowadays. Everywhere, rice from Thailand, Vietnam or India being imported to accomodate the needs of the people.
While disminish of fossil petroleum makes the price ever increases. Increase of petroleum products would also increase cost of producing foods as fertiliser, pesticide dependent on the petroleum’s price indeed a base product.
Therefore sensible government should formulate scheme or policy to emphasis on food producing and agriculture sector to increase production. By the way the people also should change the life syle on dependent solely on rice.
Here in Africa in general, their staple food are varies, from rice to casava, millet even banana .
“By the way the people also should change the life style on dependent solely on rice.”
i bet we should. this is life, we must trade off one for another. if we can’t hold the population, then we must change our eating habit. population growth in south east asia has boost rice production in the last 20 years but what good does it make? people use more fertilizers and pesticide which in turn reduce biodiversity, create new food poisoning et cetera. to the south east asian government, food security is rice productivity, which later on we know that this is fairly stupid.
no, Genetic Modified Food (GMF) can not help. what good does it make when farmers in poor countries must pay for the licence of the seed even for the seed they grow their own from the seed they have bought? this system ain’t workin. GMF is a short cut to mass food production, but gives no sustainable betterment. bidoversity provides variety of protein, vitamins, minerals which deficiency mentioned to be the hidden hunger at this moment. we thought we, who eat enough are having no nutrient deficiency? check again ur micro mineral intake.
Both GMF and intensive rice cultivation does help us to provide more rice but makes us loose the other source of nutrition plus introducing alien material to our body.
hold the population growth or shift our eating habit.
Shifting eating habit will likely create “unbalance” in other food chains or commodities. This may, then, create shortage of, for example, potatoes or corns.
@bleu: what i mean by shift is to change our eating habit from homogeneous approach to heterogeneous approach, from fast food approach to biodiversity approach.
haven’t we realize that our grand ma used to east more diverse menus with plants and animals from the nature and now all we eat are rice, beef, chicken, spinach and what else? the nature has so much richer than that. the symptom of homogenization in eating habbit is an interesting topic to discuss not just among nutritionist but also environmentalist. as David Suzuki said;
“Our disconnection from the Earth is epitomized by our relationship to food. Most urban people associate food with supermarkets but fail to connect it with the land”