Are You Stockpiling Rice at Home?

Its all over the news, on the radio, in the papers, rice is hot stuff in South East Asia. The scene here in Singapore is rather lax. Everyone is still minding their own business and there are no panic buying here at the Supermarkets. Fortunately I still see bags of rice displayed on the shelves at NTUC Fairprice this afternoon and all seems well.

I'm not too sure what's the root cause of all this rice commotion, but from what I've heard, India has stopped exporting non-basmati rice to ensure that its citizens have enough for themselves. This in turn affects the global rice supply (sounds familiar to the oil situation) and price generally shoots up. India , China , Indonesia, Vietnam all have imposed export contorls of rice and soon Thailand will impose quote for rice export.

Hmmmm, I wonder how will life be without rice? Can I survive without rice? Definitely. There's potatoes, soya, sweet potatoes and other alternatives. But will there ever be enough for the world population? One has to remember that if we switch to potatoes, we will be competing with the Americans and Europeans. The same thing might happen to the potato.

Sometimes, I wonder if the world has enough resources to support so many people. It is, in limited quantity and are we reaching the maximum? We will never know until the time comes.