Increased rice exports a short-term fix
Shortages of rice in Asia have forced Japan and several other big producers of the grain to reconsider their recent export bans. But will it help ease global markets? Sam Eaton reports.
Workers handle sacks of imported rice at a warehouse in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. (Kambou Sia/AFP/Getty Images)
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TEXT OF STORY
KAI RYSSDAL: Crude's not the only commodity in the news. There was another dismal outlook on food prices this week from the World Bank, rice in particular. But supply shortages in Asia have forced Japan and several other big rice producers to reconsider their recent export bans.
From the Marketplace Sustainability Desk Sam Eaton reports.
SAM EATON: In a region of severe rice shortages Japan is the exception. Inside a series of vast, air conditioned warehouses the country has amassed about a million and a half tons of imported rice, mostly from the U.S. The reserve has its roots in a World War II rice shortage that traumatized the nation. But with rice prices nearly tripling over the last year, Japan's emergency reserve is starting to look a lot more like hoarding.
SIMON MAXWELL: We have to be really careful not to talk ourselves into a panic about food prices because there is enough food in the world provided we manage it properly.
That's Simon Maxwell with the London-based Overseas Development Institute. He says releasing even some of that rice, as Japan is now considering, would help ease prices, especially in places where the poor spend up to 80 percent of their income on food.
The World Bank is calling on exporters to release up to a million tons of rice. Vietnam, the world's second-largest rice exporter, said today that it may lift its recent ban on overseas shipments. And Japan has already agreed to sell some of its surplus to the Philippines.
But Harvard University economist Ken Rogoff calls these fixes the political equivalent of a gas-tax holiday.
KEN ROGOFF: It's a gesture that is clearly aimed to please particularly poor people, but it's very, very temporary. It's not a big gesture.
Rogoff says hoarding may be partly to blame for rice's record price tag. But he says the fundamental problem remains: Global demand for nearly every major commodity has outstripped supply.
I'm Sam Eaton for Marketplace.
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From Tokyo, Japan, 05/22/2008
There were some problems with your story on rice.
1. Japan does not have an export ban. Production is subsidized and the price is too high (well above world market rates) and the type of rice is different from the variety consumed in most of South Asia. There is a very limited market for Japanese produced rice in China (sushi bars?) but otherwise the ministry of agriculture is trying to figure out how to unload excess stocks.
2. Your article gave the impression that Japan was importing U.S. rice for stockpiling. Japan was forced to accept imports as part of a trade agreement and the accumulating amount is due to overstocks related to declining domestic consumption and the government's policy to consume as much domestic rice as possible.
3. Other than emergency relief, the US would have objected vigorously if Japan tried to unload this surplus stock of rice that America has forced Japan to buy under minimum access requirements.
4. The last time that Japan had a bad crop year, there was a miniature version of the current crisis with price spikes as the global rice market for exports is not very large and even relatively minor shortfalls end up driving prices up. However, that was pretty minor compared to the current problem.
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