Expect the price of rice to soon double

Rice to Return 100% as Typhoons, Drought Roil Asians

Nov. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Rice prices have nowhere to go but up as drought in India and cyclones in the Philippines cripple harvests, according to the world’s biggest importer and the top exporter.

Rice may double to more than $1,000 a metric ton as dry El Nino weather shrinks output and the Philippines and India boost imports, said Sarunyu Jeamsinkul, the deputy managing director at Asia Golden Rice Ltd. in Thailand, the largest exporting nation. Prices won’t peak until March, said Rex Estoperez, a spokesman for the National Food Authority of the Philippines, the biggest importer. The agency issued a record tender for 600,000 tons last week and today called for bids for the same volume on Dec. 8 to secure grain before prices rise.

Global rice supplies are likely to be tighter than last year, when food shortages sparked riots from Haiti to Egypt, said Jeremy Zwinger, president of The Rice Trader, a brokerage and consulting company in Chico, California. Escalating food prices threaten to spark unrest in developing nations while increasing costs for beer brewer Anheuser-Busch Cos., the biggest U.S. rice buyer, and cereal maker Kellogg Co.

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GR4U - You take the most mild-mannered person imaginable, someone who would never hurt a fly, and let that person go for a few days without food. Or worse...let them see their children go without food. And result will be something akin to the Tasmanian Devil of looney toon's fame.