2008 global rice crisis

Rice field after harvest (in Japan).

In March to May 2008, some national governments began restricting export of rice and some retailers began rationing sales, due to fears of insufficient global supplies of the grain, thus becoming another key aspect to the 2007–2008 world food price crisis. In late April 2008, rice prices hit 24 cents a pound, twice the price that it was seven months earlier.

While no one single cause is blamed, the dependency of rice supply on oil prices and six years of drought in Australia's rice-growing regions appears to have tipped the scales toward a worrisome reduction in global rice supplies, and the commensurate rise in global prices.

Traditionally dependent upon rice as their main staple food, Asian nations such as India, China, Bangladesh, Philippines and Thailand were the first to "feel the pinch" of rising prices. Japan, which produces enough rice for its domestic needs, maintained a constant pricing and no consumer concern.

Asian rice consumers and agricultural commodity traders around the world had been aware of the problem for months, but it garnered widespread attention in the United States in the week beginning April 21, 2008 when a Costco Wholesale Corporation store in San Francisco, California limited rice purchases to five 20-pound bags per customer. Later in the week, on April 23, the outlet reduced that number to two. Also on April 23, Wal-Mart division Sam's Club announced it would limit the sales of 20-lb. bags of long-grain rice to four per customer. Other sources stated that the limits were only placed on imported rice, and that non-imported medium- and short-grain rice remained in comparative abundance. Also on April 23, "Thai shipments of rice" to a major Canadian rice wholesaler, Western Mills, Ltd.[1] abruptly ceased:

""We've never seen anything like this in the history of this company," said Lawry Poupart, controller at the company, which supplies major chains including Safeway and Save-On-Foods. "Everybody is precariously watching what's happening in the world."

Food Riots

Deadly riots over the rising price of food erupted in Haiti on April 4, 2008, due primarily to a jump in the price of rice, "the main ingredient of the Haitian diet,"[2]. Six people were killed in the unrest, including a U.N. peacekeeping soldier on April 12, and the unrest subsided only when the nation's Prime Minister resigned and the government lowered the price for a bushel of rice. These developments caused alarm in the highest levels of global economic analysis and planning.

See also

• Bengal famine of 1943 a similar set of circumstances in 1943, in which fear of a shortage and price inflation made available rice too expensive for the poor, leading to famine.