From producers to consumers: how rice farmers face catastrophe

The reasons for the global food crisis are manifold, including rising consumption in fast-developing nations like China and India, droughts in Australia, the rising cost of oil, and the increasing use of crops for fuel. But more than any of these, in the Philippines the pressures are demographic. “At the end of the day, it is about the huge population more than biofuels or climate change,” says Duncan Macintosh of the Philippine Rice Research Institute.
Such is the value of rice that some farmers in Thailand have started camping out in their fields with shotguns to prevent rice rustlers. Several big rice-producing nations, including Cambodia, Vietnam, Egypt, India, Pakistan and China have capped or halted exports to ensure food security for their own people. With so little rice traded internationally even during a good year, this makes the market volatile. The best Thai rice has tripled in price from $334 (