Rice Shortage, Natural or Planned

By now you’ve all heard that there’s a rice shortage that in causing the prices of rice to sky-rocket. However, I’m really wondering if this shortage is natural or planned. Here’s my thinking: while more people are eating rice…one of the reasons being touted is that as more and more Chinese are able to afford better food…wait a minute! Even when they were poor, weren’t they eating rice?

Okay, the bad weather is another reason for the rice shortage.

However, if the news wasn’t suddenly reporting it, would there be a sudden run on rice in the stores? Are the news reports contributing to the shortages? I believe so.

After all, when people start hearing about a shortage in one particular product, suddenly they feel they’d better get their share while they can. So they rush out buy as much as they can afford, and when the neighbor goes to the store and can’t find that item, then suddenly there’s a world-wide shortage!

I’m not saying that there’s not a genuine rice shortage, however, I remember in the past when there was a toilet paper shortage rumor and suddenly the stores were stripped bare. There wasn’t really a shortage until the report created one.

By the same token, while there’s a rice shortage, there’s also a shortage of other grains. Personally, I believe that the shortage of corn for food is a purely manufactured shortage. If the farmers weren’t getting more money for planting corn for fuel, there would be plenty of corn for both man and animal. From what I understand, converting corn into fuel to burn in a car uses more fuel than it produces!