Australia Is The Country Most To Blame For The Rice Shorage ?
I read an article on line that said Australia decided years ago to grow and export rice that was heavily subsidized and had almost no domestic market so it was dumped on the asian market so cheap that farmers in most Other asian countries could only grow it and sell it a a loss and therefore stopped farming and the land went wild. Then when the drought hit Australia a few years ago their rice production stalled and caused the huge shortages world wide. Now counties like Phil lack the money to put these farms back into production. True ?
I dont know where you read that from. But here are some facts.
Prices are shooting up worldwide, in part because many of those Asian countries have cut back on exports due to fears of shortages.
The Philippines is one of the top importers of rice in the world. Why is the Philippines, which is predominantly an agricultural nation, importing rice from other countries?
One of the reasons is that the Philippines government has policies which have weakened the local rice industry. Some people blame blames government planning on food security for the shortages in rice production.
Instead of increasing local rice production, the government is dependent on imported rice. For over 130 years – since the Spanish have colonised the Philippines – The Philippines has found it cheaper to import rice than to grow it. Since joining the World Trade Organization in 1995, the Philippines has become Asia’s top rice importer with average annual imports of over 1 million metric tons.
Rice lands are also disappearing because of land conversion. The government today, like the Spanish and American colonial governments of the past, has been persuading farmers to plant cash crops and other export products.
Big landlords are also converting farmland into golf courses, residential villages, and agro-industrial parks to apply for exemption from the land distribution program of the government.
The rice problem is made worse by rice smuggling. Unscrupulous rice traders collude with politicians and agricultural officials in hoarding rice supplies. This creates an artificial crisis which jacks up the price of rice. Corruption is also to be blamed. In the 2004 elections, President Arroyo distributed millions in fertilizer funds to her loyal supporters. The money could have been used to improve rice productivity.
Rice is the staple food of Filipinos. Remove it from the tables and there will be mass unrest. Blaming the weather and the limited global supply to explain the rice shortage is not enough. The government has to abandon its agricultural liberalization program and its overdependence on rice imports. The government must adopt emergency measures to increase the rice output of farmers. The time has come to implement a genuine agrarian reform.
The Philippines is the world’s largest importer of rice and expected in 2008 to import 2.7 million tons – a 42 percent increase on 2008. The price of rice has risen 30 percent in the country since January. In response, the government has flooded markets with subsidized rice, banned conversion of farmland for development, threatened rice hoarders with life imprisonment, and announced a $1 billion rice production package
What has helped also drive prices is natural disasters such as flooding in Vietnam and Thailand. Natural disasters in the Philippines and also in Australia have affected the prices of rice.
In comparison, Australia’s rice production has dropped. Australia used to produce 700,000 tons of rice and export around 600,000 annually, contributing 2 to 3 percent of the world’s rice trade. But six years of drought, which has not been offset by added spending on irrigation, have shrunk the rice industry by 98 percent. Australia expects to have its lowest output since rice production began in the country in the 1920s.
Thanks for posting this question. I actually learnt something today.
“Almost no domestic market for rice” are you kidding. Most Europeans have a rice dish or two as do other countries. Australia’s population consists of people from every ‘corner’ of the world.
The Asian population is high. We grow and export rice, as well as import it. There are many specialist Asian shops here all selling rice. The grocery stores sell between 20 to 30 different varieties of rice some local some imported and all AAA quality.
So yes we do have a market.
“not big on agriculture” since when is growing and exporting wheat, cotton, rice etc not considered agriculture.
No. The biggest country to blame for the rice shortages here is the Philippine Government itself. Thailand and Cambodia have been producing rice cheaper than the farmers in the Philippines can grow it. Add to it all the fertilizer, rice hybrid and swine scams here very little of the intended mmillionsof pesos ever got top the farmers who need them.
There is no shortage of rice and never has been. The government sees to it that 10’s of hundredsof metric tons of NFA rice is on the market.
It’s much cheaper than growing their own and susubsidizing it.
Aussie’s aren’t to big on rice. Let alone working on a rice farm and picking it by hand. I doubt Australia in the past grew that much rice to have negative impact on the Asian Rice markets. That was probably just some propaganda made up by an organisation who was controlling it all and stealing under the table.
let’s see…philippines is an agricultural country http://inlinethumb16.webshots.com/45135/… http://contemporaryartphilippines.com/up… http://www.glitterdoll.net/snapshots/feb…
SO WHY THE HELL, PHILIPPINES WOULD HAVE RICE SHORTAGE??!!
ganito kasi yan eh….kay lawak ng mga taltalon at gubat sa pilipinas, sa halip magtanim ng mga gulay, bigas o mga aanihin, puro mga tinatanim ay hotels, condominiunm,factory, subdivision, squatters
kaya wag ka nang magtaka,
fyi Australia is more of sheep and diary production!, hindi sila rice nu!
IT IS THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA,NOT AUSTRALIA TO BLAME FOR THE RICE SHORTAGES.
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