HungerWednesday shares this disturbing news at Asia Sentinel we picked up from Manuel Quezon’s FB updates about the yet another rice crisis looming just up ahead.
“This year, I will not have enough rice to eat for the whole year,” says Kong Chanthorn, a rice farmer in Srayov Kharng Tbong village in Cambodia’s Kompong Thom province. “I am afraid I cannot earn the money to buy rice to support my families because this year its price is too high.”
Chanthorn is not alone. The global price of rice, a staple for half the world’s population, is rising inexorably again, up more than 25 percent in recent months, stoked by Philippine and Indian import demand although not to the stratospheric levels of late 2007 and early 2008. At that time the price rose from about US$300 per metric ton to as much as US$1,100. Prices later fell back to about US$400 as government panic subsided across the region and bans on export were lifted, and as planting pushed up stocks.
Read the whole article about the incoming rice crisis at Asia Sentinel…
