Bad news for carb lovers and loaders? The Mirror reported it thus: RICE CRISIS HITS STORES
A SURGE in rice prices has forced suppliers to the biggest store chain in the world to limit sales to customers amid fears of an international crisis. Sam’s Club Warehouse, which supplies Wal-Mart stores across America, limited customers to four bags of rice.
The reality: two US warehouse retailers, Costco and Sam’s Club, have started limiting bulk purchases of rice. Sam’s, a unit of Wal-Mart, will place a limit of four 20-pound bags per visit on customers “due to recent supply and demand trends.”
Before we get hysterical, that’s a lot of rice - about 36kg, or 72 normal sized supermarket packets - so we’re not operating at the family shop end of the market here. There are no limits on normal retail sized packets.
Rice is a real problem - but broadly suggesting that the Great British Balti is under threat is a tad premature. Prices climbed to another record after a World Bank official on Thursday said Thailand, the largest exporter, may restrict shipments. Other exporters such as Vietnam and India have already put in place temporary bans. The Philippines jails those caught stealing or hoarding rice and rising food prices has spurred social unrest in country’s such as Egypt and Haiti.
Sempra Metals’ John Kemp sums up the broader concerns:
Something is deeply wrong in the global economy as inflation and over-fast growth lead to strains in an ever-growing number of markets (from coal, iron, shipping, steel, tin, copper, electricity, crude oil and distillates) and an ever-growing number of price restrictions and non-market responses (from diesel price controls in China and the rest of Asia, export embargos on steel in India, rice embargoes in India and Vietnam, to supermarket price freezes in the Persian Gulf and now purchasing limits in the United States). These are all symptoms of an global economy where demand is far outstripping supply, creating shortages and intense and accelerating upward pressure on prices. One way or another, growth is set to slow very sharply over the next two years - either of its own accord or because the major central banks in the United States, the Anglo-Saxon economies and China will be forced to start tightening credit conditions to prevent inflation lifting off. The economic outlook is becoming progressively grimmer.
All quite enough to worry about, without hinting that we should queue round the block at Tesco.
