How old are you?

Why are people so concerned about rice being a ‘staple’ for certain groups. It is ‘ok’ for people to switch temporarily from rice to other staples. People are not cows or sheep, we have the capability of eating and liking many different foods. This is absolutely NO reason to take such drastic measures anyway.

Maybe you haven’t seen this.

The global food crisis is a monetary phenomenon, an unintended consequence of America’s attempt to inflate its way out of a market failure. There are long-term reasons for food prices to rise, but the unprecedented spike in grain prices during the past year stems from the weakness of the American dollar.

There is a 90% regression fit between rice price and Euro/US$ on 1-year chart. Even tighter is the correlation between rice and the price of oil, another store of value against dollar depreciation. Spengler is a psudonym. Speculations on eco-blogosphere peg him for a Brit or Euro old Africa hand.

On the local news front, Costco, Mountain View is now rationing. [link] And on a more optimistic note, India may harvest record rice and wheat crop after adequate sunshine and rainfall boosted yields. [link]

The Indian government has brought this upon itself BY banning rice futures trading.

3 · dipanjan said

Let them buy rice futures.

A very interesting article claiming that an increasingly volatile market is making the time-honored futures mechanism unreliable, and increasing farmers’ risk, and that this increased risk too will increase the price of grains.

I am in support of absolutely true free trade. Where no government, either western or eastern, has the right to impose its jurisdiction over independent entities and people engaging with each-other with mutual consent.