Economies of Rice
Last Thursday we ran out of rice at our house. So on Saturday I went to the Asian grocery store and got my regular 25-pound bag of jasmine rice. I went to the shelf, looked for the right kind, put it in my cart, briefly noticed that it cost about $12 and brought it home. That night we enjoyed a wonderful Thai dinner and plenty of rice. Meanwhile, all hell is breaking loose in Haiti (the poorest country in the hemisphere) because the people cannot afford rice. After extensive violence and rioting due to the people’s desire not to starve, the president did announce plans to reduce the price of a 50-pound bag of rice from $51 to $43 . . . this reduction might (might for some, might not for others) mean the difference between eating and going hungry for the majority of that country’s population who live on less than $2 a day. But even with that reduction the poorest of the poor (at least in my area of the world) who live on the equivalent of what I pay at Sonic for a drink have to pay almost double what I pay for the same product and they’re going hungry at night because they don’t have enough money. What is wrong with this picture?
- Rebecca
April 14, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Did you happen to see the story about freerice.com on NBC Nightly tonight? Interesting concept.
April 14, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Truth is America subsidizes it’s farmers to such a degree that American farmers can sell their wheat and rice all over the world for cheaper than it can be grown in the host country. Rice has a $1.1 billion subsidy alone (source). I have been watching these riots around food and quite frankly it’s scary to me. But what’s even scarier is how we (industrialized west) are probably responsible for it on the broad scale level.
April 14, 2008 at 7:40 pm
I bet the $43 is not for the fragrant Thai rice which does not receive US government subsidies.
I have always been amazed that those who can afford, pay less, and those who are most hard-up have to pay retail. It works that way in the WalMarts and Costco’s vs. inner city corner grocery stores. And it is the same with USA-Mart vs. the fruit shacks in Third World countries. We are aghast while filling the tanks of our gas-guzzling cars while many of the world’s poor cannot buy shoes to put on the feet of their children, even though they work at the Nike factories for their day-job.
The system says insist on the cheapest price and it will force efficiency out of everyone. But are we asking at what “PRICE?”