rice-a-phony
Thursday, April 24th, 2008(pay no attention to the voice coming out of that box…)
By now you should have heard stories about ‘food rationing’ at the big box stores and the link to the global food crisis; while I would never want to diminish the staggering depth and scope of human hunger worldwide, I find the reportage about wholesale and retail rice supplies to err on the side of exaggeration–on a technicolor scale.
If you’ve paid attention, you’ve heard the word “ration” and phrases like “not since World War II” bandied about, which evoke times of upheaval and uncertainty. There’s no denying how startling the increase in the price of rice has been over the past year and that rice producing nations have limited exports to hold down the staple’s cost at home. Yet the hysteria journalists seem all too willing to stir up, I find quite tactless and annoying at best. As with oil, consumers should focus their ire on the forces at play in the distribution of rice and not so much on hype about dwindling supplies.