RICE.
Several weeks ago I heard on NPR that rice had tripled in the past year on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Oddly enough, while the Chicago Merch Ex only 'trades' 2% of the world's rice, it sets the price world wide.
Go figure - what some trader on the floor in Chicago says a bag of rice is worth, tells China and India and the other Asian lands that grow the majority of this stuff - what they should be pricing their crops.
Now its gone up 30% in one month! ONE month! What does that mean for the world? Well apparently a bunch of potential rioting as the folks growing this stuff cannot then afford to EAT it themselves.
Now, call me crazy but with the advent of 'middle class' in both India and China - you have millions (yes, the population is over a billion but we aren't talk about the hundreds of millions in poverty), dozens of millions, hundreds of millions (?) of people eating three meals a day. Worse, they can now afford to not eat it all, throwing it out (gasp:wasting it) like never before.
The pressure this is putting on the worlds food supply will continue to mount. And what with a 'virus' running rampant in Cambodia or Vietnam killing or at least stifling further crop growth, its not looking good.
And don't eve get me started on the clean water shortage. Here's hoping Dean Kamen can fix this problem before it begins the riots.
Oh yeah, that's why the murder and bloodshed in Darfur is happening.
Now *YOU* know.
