Food price rises

Warnings of more civil unrest as rice prices set to rise

Article published on the 2008-04-11 Latest update 2008-04-11 15:23 TU

Food price riots in Cameroon in March
(Photo : Reuters)

The price of Asia's staple food, rice, is likely to continue to rise, according to the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), and that may mean more civil unrest. The institute reports a sustained rise in prices over the past two years to near-record levels and says that the trend is likely to continue.

The IRRI says that stocks have been running down for years but the crisis started to bite in 2003-4, when China came onto the world market, cutting into supplies available to other buying countries.  

It says that the world has been consuming more than it's been producing for some time and that government efforts to keep stockpiles have failed.

The IRRI's Duncan Mackintosh told RFI that global stocks are now at their lowest for three decades.

And, with rice the staple food for three billion people, mostly in poorer countries, only seven per cent of global production is traded on the international market.

The UN and the World Bank have also warned that food price rises threaten to spark off unrest worldwide.

Recently there have been protests and riots linked to inflation in at least ten countries, including Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Haiti, Egypt and Indonesia.

In the Philippines, where the IRRI is based, the government had to use troops to protect deliveries of rice to poor areas, for fear of violence.

The IRRI's Mackintosh predicts good harvests this year.

"Our message is, there's no need to panic," he says. "It's very unfortunate some of the social unrest we've seen - and the panic - because there's going to be enough rice for everybody."

But, he adds, the second Asia harvest will be over by November and no new supplies will come on the market until the following May.

"For rice that's the real period of concern, not so much now," he concludes.