Global Rice Shortage is Set To Be the Biggest in 20 Years (cnbc.com) 147
From China to the U.S. to the European Union, rice production is falling and driving up prices for more than 3.5 billion people across the globe, particularly in Asia-Pacific -- which consumes 90% of the world's rice. From a report: The global rice market is set to log its largest shortfall in two decades in 2023, according to Fitch Solutions. And a deficit of this magnitude for one of the world's most cultivated grains will hurt major importers, analysts told CNBC. "At the global level, the most evident impact of the global rice deficit has been, and still is, decade-high rice prices," Fitch Solutions' commodities analyst Charles Hart said. Rice prices are expected to remain notched around current highs until 2024, stated a report by Fitch Solutions Country Risk & Industry Research dated April 4.
The price of rice averaged $17.30 per cwt through 2023 year-to-date, and will only ease to $14.50 per cwt in 2024, according to the report. Cwt is a unit of measurement for certain commodities such as rice. "Given that rice is the staple food commodity across multiple markets in Asia, prices are a major determinant of food price inflation and food security, particularly for the poorest households," Hart said. The global shortfall for 2022/2023 would come in at 8.7 million tonnes, the report forecast. That would mark the largest global rice deficit since 2003/2004, when the global rice markets generated a deficit of 18.6 million tonnes, said Hart. Further reading: There is a Global Rice Crisis.
The price of rice averaged $17.30 per cwt through 2023 year-to-date, and will only ease to $14.50 per cwt in 2024, according to the report. Cwt is a unit of measurement for certain commodities such as rice. "Given that rice is the staple food commodity across multiple markets in Asia, prices are a major determinant of food price inflation and food security, particularly for the poorest households," Hart said. The global shortfall for 2022/2023 would come in at 8.7 million tonnes, the report forecast. That would mark the largest global rice deficit since 2003/2004, when the global rice markets generated a deficit of 18.6 million tonnes, said Hart. Further reading: There is a Global Rice Crisis.
Deglobalization (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Deglobalization (Score:5, Insightful)
We're not, we're much more people. The world population in 1900 was about 1.6 billion. At the end of WW2 it was about 2.6 billion. Today is is 8 billion.
Most countries in the world can't grow enough food to support their own populations without a fully globalized and industrialized world and trade routes to match. There are several countries that only grow enough food because of the industrial production and application of fertilizers.
If the world doesn't get its shit together and play nice, we're going to rapidly head back to mass famines in many parts of the world.
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I do hope that someone else's offspring will be able to square that circle. It seems beyond our generations. Of course, whether there is time (between now, and the Sun boiling the oceans, say 1.5 Gyr form today) for
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But your overpopulation is not their problem.
it's not like we're all people or anything
Overpopulation in the Sahel or India is not our problem, in the same way as the Bronze Age Collapse. It's not that we don't care, just that there is nothing we can do about it.
It is up to the people living there to either do something, or face the consequences. Unless you want some sort of neo-colonialism?
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Perhaps the real problem is that centralized economies don't work. Instead of governments telling citizens how much food they can grow when we could have a free market set prices so farmers can know what people want to eat and act accordingly. The part the government might play is to buy up some surplus food when it can, and they store it up to hand out should there be a natural disaster or something. A bit like the strategic petroleum reserve. Store up grains, milk (as a powder and as cheese), fruits a
Re:Deglobalization (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps the real problem is that centralized economies don't work. Instead of governments telling citizens how much food they can grow when we could have a free market set prices so farmers can know what people want to eat and act accordingly. The part the government might play is to buy up some surplus food when it can, and they store it up to hand out should there be a natural disaster or something. A bit like the strategic petroleum reserve. Store up grains, milk (as a powder and as cheese), fruits and vegetables (canned, frozen, or dried), proteins in various forms (peanut butter might be a good one but eggs, fish, and red meat would be preferable by many).
the US government doesn’t buy food to hand out in emergencies, it buys it to shore up prices to farmers and big agra; all of whom hat “socialism” until it benefits them.
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Re:Deglobalization (Score:5, Insightful)
In the best productive year, there is agricultural production that people don't want. In the worst productive year, we avoid a famine.
The problem is you don't know if you've got the most productive year or the least productive year until it's over.
Re:Deglobalization (Score:4, Insightful)
the US government doesn’t buy food to hand out in emergencies, it buys it to shore up prices to farmers and big agra
It does both.
It's not a bad idea to have surplus food production, because when there's a shortage of food, bad things happen. It's not like a shortage of oil. Food security is an important national issue.
no profit in preparing for an emergency (Score:3)
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Re: no profit in preparing for an emergency (Score:2)
One did his research. Makes me glad to read we still have informed people here in slashdot. Gives hope!
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Free markets do not maximize output, they optimize returns on inputs.
Since returns on agriculture vary from year to year due to outside factors, you can't determine how much agricultural production you needed until the harvest is over. It is slightly more efficient to keep the least productive land out of production and have more famine years than it is to eliminate famines but have production surpluses most of the time.
But it isn't much more efficient, so we decide to run agricultural surpluses.
Re: Deglobalization (Score:3)
You are confusing monopolies with competitive markets.
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Well yeah! But let's not tell government or religious leaders that. Keep breeding! Perpetual growth! Sustainability is bad!!!
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You won't mind then if I sell your children into slavery, after I've breached your "Survivalist" compound. Obviously, I'll be compassionate - I'd sell you as a sex slave into the same brothels as them so you can really express how little you care for these other people. Do you like ... oh, sorry, why would that be a question?
Do try to keep up to date. China has, somewhat, blunted it's population bomb. Some time this ye
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I'll just sit here in USA and be okay. We're a net exporter of food. Sure, the price will go up but we'll still have the option to buy. All these other countries that breed beyond their ability to feed their people, they will run into shortages and it won't be pretty.
Unfortunately for many in the USA they will starve as well since food is just another commodity to be traded for the highest price. Big agricultural doesn't care if Americans are buying the food. They care only about whoever is the highest bidd
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Here's a link for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. I'm sure you'll find it very interesting.
Re: Deglobalization (Score:2)
That's also because their ban was supposed to gradually come on over a decade, but the government decided to do it immediately
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cwt (Score:5, Informative)
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Except when a hundredweight is 100 pounds, like in North America.
I thought that when it was called "central", as in cwt, it was 100lbs, not 112, but it's a confusing topic and I could easily be very wrong about that. Anyway you cut it, it's a lousy standard because of the confusion, and it is mostly being replaced by defined values revolving around kilograms.
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I guess I'm the outlier since I eat rice multiple times a week. I also eat potatoes about as often. Yep, I'm white. Rice is super affordable and easy to make.
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If rice were a staple food in America - as opposed to an occasional, luxury food
Occasional, yes, but luxury? Except for this recent hike, rice in the US was hovering around $0.70 per pound for 10 years. A pound makes about 2.5 cups and the recommended daily intake is 1-2 cups. So it costs less than $0.70 per day to eat rice. Ground beef is about $4-5 per pound with steak sometimes double that. I would not call rice a luxury item.
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If only there was a better system of measurements available. Sigh. But it's not possible. I SAID IT'S NOT POSSIBLE. SHUT UP!
Okay, I'll say it for you - everyone needs to give up this stupidity of using multiple systems and just standardize on stone weight [wikipedia.org].
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My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!
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Holy, crap, I'm paying 500% markup over cwt for the lowest grade long-grain and that's the best price I can find.
Smells like coop opportunity.
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The hundredweight is 100 common lbs.
The British "long" cwt is 112.
90% of the world faces a rice shortage... (Score:2)
More people need to play ... (Score:2)
https://freerice.com/ [freerice.com]
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Or just plug chatgpt api into that with a very modest precursor statement. It solves them quite well.
Let's play word association. I'll give you a word and a list of possible solutions, and you respond with the correct solution.
Sure, I'd be happy to play word association with you! Let's get started.
Word: swift
Solutions:
- fast
- sick
- very sad
- mad
Solution: fast.
VeblinGood (Score:5, Interesting)
A Veblin Good is one where demand increases when the price goes up. We think of prestige products like art and jewels, but the prototypical example is bread. The more bread costs, the less money people have for meat, so they need to buy/eat more bread to feel full.
So this moderate price increase may be magnified in poor countries. Maybe we can grow rice in the flooded part of the central valley . . . it's easier than moving all the almond trees there.
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Is that different than a Veblen good?
Re: VeblinGood (Score:2)
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A Møøse once bit my sister...
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No, realli!
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Rice is already a major crop in the Sacramento Valley.
Even American rice (Score:2)
I picked up my 40 pound bag of rice about two weeks ago and it was $67. The last time I bought it it was down around $50.
This is a rice which comes from California and has a recognizable name and bag design, so it's not some high end, limited production variety.
Either they're paying the illegal immigrants more to harvest this stuff or they're jumping on the band wagon of higher prices just because they can.
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I picked up my 40 pound bag of rice about two weeks ago and it was $67. The last time I bought it it was down around $50.
Food prices are going up across the board. Doesn't matter what it is. I do the weekly grocery shopping for my household, and the price increases have been noticeable.
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I picked up my 40 pound bag of rice about two weeks ago and it was $67. The last time I bought it it was down around $50.
Food prices are going up across the board. Doesn't matter what it is. I do the weekly grocery shopping for my household, and the price increases have been noticeable.
I'd be extremely curious if any of these price increases end up being passed along to the producers. I know when I was farming all the shortages gave the distribution networks massive profit spikes, but we never saw any of that make its way to us. I'd imagine, short of the massive corporate farms where the distribution and the farmer are all the same company, it's probably the same today. Yet another way to kill off the few remaining family farms. Sigh.
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It's OK, rice isn't really produced by "family farms". Even when the business is owned by a family, consolidation means that it's way beyond "farm". It's a whole conglomerate. For example, "Lundberg Family Farms" is controlled by a 10-member board, some of the members of which belong to the Lundberg family.
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I picked up my 40 pound bag of rice about two weeks ago and it was $67. The last time I bought it it was down around $50.
This is a rice which comes from California and has a recognizable name and bag design, so it's not some high end, limited production variety.
Either they're paying the illegal immigrants more to harvest this stuff or they're jumping on the band wagon of higher prices just because they can.
Not sure if you remember the last Rice shortage crisis. Costco was limiting 1 bag per customers as people are literally buying rice and export it to Thailand.
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Costco was limiting 1 bag per customers as people are literally buying rice and export it to Thailand.
Extremely unlikely.
You perhaps mean China.
Depending on year: Thailand is the biggest rice exporter of the world. Alternating with Vietnam.
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I mean, how many eggs do you really need? 48 eggs is quite a bit.
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You've never heard of the difference between wholesale commodity prices paid to the farmer and retail prices paid by consumers checkout?
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No.
Look up the wholesale commodity price of almost any food then compare to what you pay at the grocery store. 1000% markup is par for the course.
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or they're jumping on the band wagon of higher prices just because they can.
Yes they're charging higher prices "because they can" because that's how prices work in a market economy. When it's something we see as essential like food or gasoline we call it "gouging", but charging higher prices during a shortage is how the system is *supposed* to work. That's what draws investment to economic areas where there are shortages and away from areas where there are gluts.
It's reasonable to be concerned about the social effects on poor and vulnerable people, but the way politicians tend
Soylent Green (Score:2)
Soylent Green will be People, it seems.
This is just the start ... will get a lot worse... (Score:2, Interesting)
Climate change is going to nail us hard over the coming decades. ... starvation.
There's many who believe the first very real widespread issue humanity faces is
If we take Pakistan, mentioned in this article - it's all about the glaciers.
70% of the countries fresh water is derived from them.
They are now a contributing factor to floods - and as they retreat, will be a contributing factor to drought.
Eventually, agriculture at the levels Pakistan have now, will be impossible.
The entire region - including parts
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My prediction is that even before these disruptions cause worldwide starvation, disputes over dwindling resources are going to trigger a nuclear war Even a regional nuclear war would quickly spiral into a full-out apocalypse.
Since we can barely keep ourselves from starting nuclear wars even in the best of times, civilization as we know it today is basically doomed.
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My prediction is that even before these disruptions cause worldwide starvation, disputes over dwindling resources are going to trigger a nuclear war Even a regional nuclear war would quickly spiral into a full-out apocalypse.
Since we can barely keep ourselves from starting nuclear wars even in the best of times, civilization as we know it today is basically doomed.
Yeah - sadly true.
Severe resource shortage = about the best reason for war to start.
As a 50-something grey beard, my selfish side hopes I can ride it out in relative comfort into my 70's ... but it isn't looking positive.
The alarming aspect which few people seem to realise, is that we've baked in anthropogenic climate change for decades to come.
There's this naive hope that we can just reach net zero and everything will be roses - or at the very least, halt further increases and sit at around 1.5c above pre-
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Meh ... fossil water collapse, arable land collapse, demographic collapse among the cultures keeping the world fed, AI proliferation, bioweapon technology proliferation, peak fertiliser.
Shoveling deckchairs on the titanic can be entertaining, I like the technical challenge of net zero emission targets, but this plane is cratering regardless.
Lots of solutions -- check out Inhabitat (Score:2)
https://inhabitat.com/ [inhabitat.com]
Lots of ideas there on doing more with less -- as well as doing more with more.
One example from there: ... This year, the 2023 Living Vehicle model comes with a more powerful, self-sufficient technology called Watergen (a
https://inhabitat.com/tiny-hom... [inhabitat.com]
"Starting at a price of $339,995 plus customizations, the Living Vehicle features a spa-like bathroom, home theater and a chefâ(TM)s kitchen. It even has a convertible mobile office loaded with the most up-to-date Apple technology.
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Bangladesh and Myanmar do not rely on Glaciers, they rely on the Monsun.
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By most accounts rising CO2 and shorter winters have *increased* yields and are predicted to continue to do so.
If yo mean with *WE* the US, no idea.
Worldwide certainly not. And definitely not in European countries. Hint: no water.
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Perhaps you should dig a bit deeper into the topic?
Writing stuff like this: in the quote refers to informed agricultural experts that warned solely relying on organic fertilizer is well known to be less productive.
a) it is factually wrong that organic fertilizer is less productive
b) that is not what happened there
c) -> they had no fertilizer at all!! As before petrol for farmers and fertilizer was paid by the government
d) the problem is not fertilizer bottom line, but having no fuel for running farm equi
Why always "too little food" not "overpopulation"? (Score:3)
As if more humans were somehow a good thing rather than overloading a rather small planet.
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people don't understand their own food/energy needs and think that an acre is a lot of land and surely could support their whole family, so there's plenty of room left.
An acre of land could support a whole family, if it was intensively organically farmed using zero-tilth agriculture and plants in guilds, and it was a family of four. But we don't grow most crops that way, because you can't use machine cultivation.
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Dude - an acre won't come any where near feeding a family of four using anything you'd call "organic" unless you mean the whole of organic-chemistry..
If per-industrial history is any guide you are looking at 5 acres minimum to feed them on a mostly vegetarian diet but perhaps with some eggs and chicken when hen ages past its productive egg laying and maybe some goats milk in the mix.
Oh and if anything goes wrong at all like one freak weather event they stave..
An acre is NOTHING in terms of food production.
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Dude - an acre won't come any where near feeding a family of four using anything you'd call "organic"
OK sport [amazon.com]
If per-industrial history is any guide
It isn't.
An acre is NOTHING in terms of food production.
Sure, if you do things the per[sic]-industrial way.
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Okay - from your own link
"From a quarter of an acre, you can harvest 1400 eggs, 50 pounds of wheat, 60 pounds of fruit, 2000 pounds of vegetables, 280 pounds of pork, and 75 pounds of nuts."
Now the average person consumes about 900 pounds of food per year. So if we sportingly accepted your source as trustworthy you get there in theory without much margin for error.
However I still very much doubt it, without shipping in all kinds of energy, and other things as basic as water from outside that acre. I picke
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Now the average person consumes about 900 pounds of food per year.
That would be roughly 3 pounds per day. That is not an "average" person.
Not even I can eat that much without ding 6h workout a day.
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Re:Why always "too little food" not "overpopulatio (Score:5, Insightful)
Well for starters, because human life is more valuable than commodities.
What does "overpopulation" mean anyway? Who has the right to draw a line and say that X population is OK, but X+1 is overpopulated? There are still vast regions of the world that are completely undeveloped and have little if any population. Texas alone (the 2nd most populous state in the US) has 88 counties with populations of less than 10 people per square mile. Much of that land could be productive, if there were a need for it to be productive.
The world's rice woes have nothing to do with population, and everything to do with economics.
Re: Why always "too little food" not "overpopulati (Score:2)
Would you need fertiliser and fuel to make those empty texan areas productive?
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Most definitely, kind of like every single productive farm in every country of the world today.
Let them have cake (Score:3)
No seriously. Cake is made from wheat.
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Eggs... and milk... and wheat! That's nutrition!
That's why dad lets the kids eat chocolate cake for breakfast.
Crazy markups (Score:2)
$17 for 100lbs of rice is at least 6x what I actually pay.
Re: Crazy markups (Score:2)
A 250g sachet of microwave-in -2-minutes rice is between 50p and £1.50 in my local shops, (that is 250g including the water, it cooks in) so 1cwt would be between $124 and $372. And this is with the shops making so little profit that they cannot afford to pay their staff any more than minimum wage!
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So what you are saying is... (Score:2)
I should buy commodities in rice and watch the price soar?
in 20 years (Score:2)
perrenial and two crop per season rice (Score:2)
Perrenial and two crop per season rice exists.
Plus we are genetically engineering drought tolerant high yield varieties. Some can even grow in brackish or salty water.
At this point we all in on technology. we will have to terraform the earth, as the natural systems will not survive in large enough areas to be sustainable.
Way easier than terraforming Mars though.
I don't think global civilization is gonna make it.
We'll shatter into the few local and insular civilizations that figure out how to feed themselves
Re: Rice is nice (Score:2)
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A friend in one of the countries that enforced a "temporary ban" says that the "cheap Ukrainian grain" has done nothing at all to the prices of bread, flours or sunflower oil, which apparently are still double what they were two years ago.
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That's the joke, it seems that the the "cheap grain" did not manifest itself at all, but the (heavily subsidized) "agribusiness" is all up in arms.
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Rice growing requires lots of water and burning the plants in the fields at the end of the season, creating carbon pollution. (There are greener disposal methods, but costlier).
It's time for society to reduce dependence on that grain, and switch to another.
Also, most rice around here is white rice, which is just about empty carbs when in its natural state; most of their nutrients are artificially added after the fact. So folks who eat white rice frequently should probably be eating a *lot* less rice than they do.
For meat we should be replacing cows with chickens, for example. But dammit, I love burgers. Hopefully they'll be able to engineer chicken-cow hybrids: bok bok mooo!
Or at least add seaweed to the cows' diets so they become less of a methane source.
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which is just about empty carbs when in its natural state; :P
That is nonsense.
In its natural state it is mostly fibres
Then it gets milled and the skin removed, but they remove so much that YOU only get the core of the grain, and that is mostly starch.
In the rest of the world rice is mostly sold in a normal state, not 50% of the outer hull removed.
People who like rice, mostly eat "full grain rice" anyway, and then indeed only the fibrous skin is removed.
Read a book about it, your attitude is centric to your
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which is just about empty carbs when in its natural state; That is nonsense. In its natural state it is mostly fibres :P
Then it gets milled and the skin removed, but they remove so much that YOU only get the core of the grain, and that is mostly starch.
In the rest of the world rice is mostly sold in a normal state, not 50% of the outer hull removed.
You and I actually agree, but there's a linguistic misunderstanding. We're talking about two different steps in the process as "natural".
The fully natural state that you're talking about — before removal of all the other bits — is, indeed, a more natural state, but it is also not white rice at that point.
The key difference between white rice and brown rice is that large parts of the rice have been removed. Thus, when I said "natural state" in the context of white rice, I was talking about the
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China and India are the two biggest rice producers. I'm not sure if their people, nor the people in the low-income countries buying from them, feel the same way about "empty carbs" as you do.
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It's time for society to reduce dependence on that grain, and switch to another. It's usually easier for the younger generation to switch
Random westerners can stop eating rice (I mean $40 sushi) and feel good. It won't be hard since they didn't really eat rice anyway but it may be a little harder in Asia when your income and your life depends on it for centuries, old or young. Also I don't understand how bad burning field at the end of the season is(concerning co2) since you will capture the same amount next year (not including carbon released during production which is definitively lost obviously).
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It doesn't matter for CO2, but nitrogen and sulphur go up in smoke. We're running at the wall of peak fertiliser fast enough already.
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whatever brownshirt.
Please don't feed the trolls (Score:2)
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They drink Bud Light.