A Run on Rice?!

A majority of economists think the upswing in food and energy prices is due to fundamental issues of supply and demand—and not driven by speculation, a Wall Street Journal survey finds; 51% pegged demand from China and India as the chief cause of the oil boom. More »

Amid rising food prices and overtaxed international reserves, President Bush proposed a new $770 million aid package today, Reuters reports. The money is part of a supplemental $70 billion measure that also includes Iraq war funding and would require a vote in Congress. More »

The prime minister of Thailand is exploring the idea of setting up a rice price-fixing cartel with four other governments in southeast Asia, including the military dictatorship of Burma. The Bangkok Post reports that Samak Sundaravej wants to establish an OPEC-style collective of producers that will influence the market for rice, whose rapidly rising price has resulted in protests and hunger riots. More »

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is putting together a task force to deal with an "unprecedented" world crisis that's left 100 million without enough food, the BBC reports. Ban also called on donors to follow through on pledges for the World Food Program, saying only 62% of the $755 million needed has been promised—and only $18 million delivered. More »

Even as the burgeoning price of oil slaps consumers at the pump, a darker global market crisis looms as rising commodities prices compound the pressures of poverty worldwide. The UN has said that spiking food prices have started "a silent tsunami threatening to plunge more than 100 million people on every continent into hunger." Newsweek investigates the causes, which are both complicated and simple. More »

Food scientists are plotting a new "green revolution" to solve a growing food crisis, LiveScience reports. Facing what a World Food Program official called a “silent tsunami” of world hunger, researchers are working on a sequel to the first "green revolution" of the mid-20th century, whose innovations included the fertilizers, pesticides and better irrigation that helped increase crop yields. More »

Sam's Club joined Costco today in limiting how much rice customers can buy, Bloomberg reports. The restrictions by the nation's largest warehouse retail chains come with the price of rice at record highs around the world, which has spurred some to begin hoarding, Bloomberg notes. Sam's Club customers can buy no more than four bags per visit. More »

Costco is seeing unusually high demand for basics such as rice and flour, Reuters reports, a development the warehouse giant attributes to customer uncertainty over global food shortages. The company, which sells to individual shoppers as well as restaurants, has put limits in place for those items at some stores. Customers are apparently stocking up amid heavy media coverage of a global food crunch. More »

Food rations for hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren may be cut because of surging crop prices that have widened the World Food Program’s funding gap to $750 million, Reuters says. The UN food aid agency also blamed the situation on high fuel prices and reductions in new crop plantings. “The world’s misery index is rising,” the program’s top exec warned. More »

Sharp hikes in the prices of staples like wheat and rice are sending shockwaves around the world and convincing governments to rediscover the virtues of the potato, Reuters reports. Spuds are nutritious, will grow just about anywhere, and they yield up to four times more food per acre than other staples. Peruvians, faced with soaring wheat prices, have been switching to potato bread. More »

Rice feeds half the world's population, but this year there isn't enough to go around and prices have risen by 50% over the last two weeks alone. Population growth is outpacing production, and stocks are at a 30-year low after droughts decimated harvests in China and Australia. Countries are banning rice exports and punishing hoarders to prevent looming food riots, the Guardian reports. More »

Rice husks might be the key to lowering electricity use, bomb-proofing buildings and making products—from airplanes to tennis rackets—lighter. A Malaysian scientist says she’s found a cheap way to create aerogel, the world’s lightest solid, from discarded rice husks. The material combines incredible insulating power and strength with near weightlessness, reports AP, but has so far been prohibitively expensive to make. More »

The US economy may be teetering on a precipice but agriculture is enjoying what one industry analyst is calling a "golden age" after decades of decline, with bountiful harvests of crops and profits. The boom is fueled by the soaring demand from ethanol producers and to fill grain orders from China and India, reports the Wall Street Journal . More »

Expect another surge in the cost of breakfast cereal: The benchmark price for wheat rose above $10 a bushel for the first time today, further fueling the inflation in global food costs that kicked in last summer. Benchmark prices for rice futures also hit a new high, and corn and soybeans hit 11- and 34-year peaks, respectively, the Financial Times reports. More »