Climate change will reach everyone in one way or another. Countries like India, Pakistan, Thailand, Vietnam and China are suffering from extreme floods and other historic droughts, something that, in the midst of inflationary processes, is taking its toll on the production of one of the essential foods: rice.
For these reasons, Thailand and Vietnam , two of the main exporting countries of this grain, established an agreement to act jointly and increase international rice prices .
Alongkorn Phonbutr, advisor to the Thai Ministry of Agriculture, issued a statement saying that the current price of rice is excessively low and “unfair”.
Currently, the international price per ton of rice is around 400 dollars (8,000 Mexican pesos), a price that “is not logical with the increase in the cost of production, the price of fertilizer and fuel due to the impact of the COVID-19 crisis. 19 and the Russian-Ukrainian war,” the official said, according to the EFE agency.
The rice production of the exporting countries of Asia represents 90% of the world total. In contrast, despite the fact that Mexico consumes about 1.18 million tons of rice per year, it produces less than 12% of the total demand. The rest comes from Asian countries such as, precisely, Thailand and other exporting countries, according to .
Farmers, traders and analysts recently told Reuters that torrential rains in India’s grain belt, heat wave in China, floods in Bangladesh or Pakistan and declining quality in Vietnam could dampen yields in four of the top five rice producers in the world.
India’s major rice-producing states Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh have seen monsoon rainfall deficits of up to 45% so far this season, according to data from the state meteorological department.
The lack of water has caused, in part, a 13% decrease in rice planting this year, which could mean a decrease in production of 10 million tons, or about 8%, compared to last year, according to BV Krishna Rao, president of the Indian Rice Exporters Association.
