Impenetrable Farming Practices Finally Come in Handy
The Times - Japan’s silos key to relieving rice shortage
The United States and Japan are poised to strike a deal that will remove one of the most widely reviled distortions in global rice markets and could send prices plummeting in the coming weeks.
The move, which will flood the market with an estimated 1.5 million tonnes of high-grade American rice that is sitting in Japanese silos, comes amid continuing rice export restrictions by some of the world’s biggest suppliers and rioting in countries where the population cannot afford the price increases.
Senior government sources in Tokyo told The Times that Japan had received permission from Washington to begin exports from its giant, but largely hidden, mountain of unwanted American rice to countries that need it most. The exposure of the vast Japanese rice surplus has emerged as one of the chief imbalances of world rice markets and an effect of the complex and wasteful lattice of rules, subsidies and pacts that have knocked global agriculture markets so badly out of kilter.
I don’t get farming at all. But whatever, well done Calrose rice!
(This is by Leo Lewis, who last I checked was pacing the corridors of Bangkok reporting on everyone else in the world pacing the corridors of Bangkok. I guess he gave up on ever getting into Burma? Or maybe he just quit pacing and decided to get some work done.)
May 18th, 2008 at 11:28 am
I don’t get farming at all.
This was a no brainer. Japan tries to keep small rice farmers going for reasons paranoid and cultural. We stomped down the rice doors a few years back, but they insist on eating Japaneese rice. It’s crazy. The Feds should keep their damn hands off agricultural policy except for maintaining the peanut allotment and keeping countries from dumping cheap sugar on us.