The price of rice is skyrocketing, and it's pushing millions more people towards starvation
The price of rice is skyrocketing, and it's pushing millions more people towards starvation
The Indian rice export ban, the war in Ukraine and El Niño are combining to create a "doom loop" for the world's poorest people, as staple food prices soar.
As far as I can make out the Indian export ban is in response to the grain export strikes by Russia in Odessa. Fewer alternative grains coming in necessitates not exporting what there will be a higher internal demand for.
Russia has attacked a key part of the world's basic food supply. I'll be amazed if this conflict doesn't get bigger.
And historically, India has suffered some of the most horrific famines in the history of humanity as a consequence of international trade decisions. So you can understand why they're protective of their own internal food supply.
The Indians are also going through a lot of efforts to continue to support or at least not interfere with Russia in this war. Likely because they rely so intensely on Russian equipment and armaments for their military. Not to mention their apparent continuing love of cheap Russian fossil exports.
The way I see it, they know they have food for their own people even if the world starves because of all this. I don't really think the Indian government has a long-term view here, and in the short term their partnership with Russia seems too painful to end for them even if it seems inevitable that it must from an outside perspective.
TIL that 40.5% of the world’s rice comes from India. That’s a lot of rice that’s no longer going to be circulating in the global market.
Seems like this is also going to have the largest impact on Africa, who have also been impacted by the lack of grain exports from Ukraine since Russia invaded.
Good news, everyone! They can now make rice from plants!
I wonder what this will mean for their farmers. Won't they just be tempted to scale down farming operations? If I go to the shop here it's basically all Indian brand rice if not for the supermarket brand ones (which is probably Indian too).
