marduk
Sarnie Clown!
The article below from the NY Times should give a clear picture on what's going on.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/business...;pagewanted=all
The gist of it though, comes from this:
"Several factors are contributing to the steep rice in prices. Rising affluence in India and China has increased demand. At the same time, drought and other bad weather have reduced output in Australia and elsewhere. Many rice farmers are turning to more lucrative cash crops, reducing the amount of land devoted to the grain. And urbanization and industrialization have cut into the land devoted to rice cultivation."
Cambodia isn't holding back exports because of elections. It decided to cut its exportation of rice down because they want to keep the price of rice low in their country. Thus, if they export less, there should be more rice in their country which will help with the worldwide shortage.
The people who have been hit hardest by this though are Africans. Thus, if you can, skip out on the rice and eat something else.
One more thing, they forgot two other factors from the above article. First is that the high price of oil makes everything more expensive. To cultivate rice, there might be machineries that would require the use of fuel. With prices going up, that trickles down to the value of rice itself. Also, the lower value of the American dollar also mean that rice commodity trade at a much higher price than what it would usually go for.
So yeah...higher price of food commodities, budgetary cuts for education (at least in cali), state deficits all across the board, and only 70% (and that's a high estimate) of high school kids are graduating despite the "awesome" No Child Left Behind Policy. All of this and the cost of the Iraq War is approaching $510 BILLION DOLLARS. California has a state deficit of $16 Billion.
So don't you think the cost of Iraq could go towards something else?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/business...;pagewanted=all
The gist of it though, comes from this:
"Several factors are contributing to the steep rice in prices. Rising affluence in India and China has increased demand. At the same time, drought and other bad weather have reduced output in Australia and elsewhere. Many rice farmers are turning to more lucrative cash crops, reducing the amount of land devoted to the grain. And urbanization and industrialization have cut into the land devoted to rice cultivation."
Cambodia isn't holding back exports because of elections. It decided to cut its exportation of rice down because they want to keep the price of rice low in their country. Thus, if they export less, there should be more rice in their country which will help with the worldwide shortage.
The people who have been hit hardest by this though are Africans. Thus, if you can, skip out on the rice and eat something else.
One more thing, they forgot two other factors from the above article. First is that the high price of oil makes everything more expensive. To cultivate rice, there might be machineries that would require the use of fuel. With prices going up, that trickles down to the value of rice itself. Also, the lower value of the American dollar also mean that rice commodity trade at a much higher price than what it would usually go for.
So yeah...higher price of food commodities, budgetary cuts for education (at least in cali), state deficits all across the board, and only 70% (and that's a high estimate) of high school kids are graduating despite the "awesome" No Child Left Behind Policy. All of this and the cost of the Iraq War is approaching $510 BILLION DOLLARS. California has a state deficit of $16 Billion.
So don't you think the cost of Iraq could go towards something else?
