Southeast Asia:
The region’s taste for rice will help insulate the region from the worst fallout of the corn-driven food shortage.
Thailand and Vietnam, the world's first- and second-largest rice exporters, have harvested enough rice this year to go around. This offers the world an insurance policy against massive hunger: if corn or wheat prices spin out of control, food importers across the globe could abandon these crops for Southeast Asian rice to stave off a potentially dire food shortage.
And in Thailand, considered the centre of the rice-producing universe, the government would love to sell off its abundant supply. Across the region, decent weather has enabled healthy harvests. But Thailand’s warehouses are practically bursting thanks to a fluke of populist politics. To secure votes in rice country, Thailand’s ruling party has vowed to buy every grain farmers can harvest for up to 50 percent above the market rate.
The result: overstuffed rice warehouses, a government eager to sell off its stores and a potential release valve if corn sends food prices into crisis mode.
But as the region's consumer class swells, more families are opting to fill their bellies with meat in lieu of Asia’s signature grain. In Vietnam’s go-getter economy for example, Asian Development Bank stats show the average person’s diet drawing 73 per cent of their daily calories from rice five decades ago compared to just 57 per cent in recent years.
While middle-income Southeast Asians don’t eat much corn, their dinner often does. Chickens, cows and pigs feed on both milled corn and soybeans, another crop wilting from the American drought. This threatens to nudge up the price of meat for families who truly feel the difference a dollar makes.
Original Article
Source: the star
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