Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Rice whiplash...

Boy - you just get home from a food riot and get your effigies cleaned and put away and BAM!
A delegation from Thailand, the world's biggest rice exporter, is asking Vietnam to help it stabilize the tumbling price of rice -- the latest indication of how agricultural markets have changed in the months since riots over food costs gripped parts of the developing world.
Industry experts aren't expecting any major price-fixing accords between the two countries, which together control about 45% of global rice exports.
...
Just a few months ago, residents in poor countries took to the streets to protest the soaring price of rice and other food. Since then, grain prices have fallen about 30% from their peaks in mid-2008, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
The price of Thai rice, a global benchmark, has dropped to about $600 a ton from nearly $1,000 in May. Rice prices in Thailand probably would have fallen further, analysts say, without a government program that buys excess supplies from farmers. In Vietnam, which doesn't have such a program, prices have fallen to about $450 a ton.
[More]

Wonder how many of those 100# sacks of rice I saw going out of Sam's Club last year are becoming mouse food right now?

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