http://www.fao.org/rice2004/en/photog.htm 

“The time will come when people around the world, especially in Asian countries, will suffer from rice shortage if we do not address the threat now”, said Director General Dr. Ronald Cantrell of International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) during the celebration of the International Year of Rice held at IRRI campus, University of the Philippines (U.P.), Los Baños, Laguna, in November 2004. Three years later, his prediction has now come true…  

***NEWS UPDATE 23 ARPIL 2008***GLOBAL FOOD SHORTAGE LINKED TO BIOFUEL USE

Worldwide shortage of rice sends prices soaring - The Strait Times reported quoting a rice exporter: ‘In my 25 years of trading, I have never seen such a bad position.’ As the price of rice climbs across South Asia, farmers and millers in Thailand are sitting on stocks and waiting for it to rise even further, said a top rice exporter in Bangkok. There is a rice shortage in Bangladesh and China too, among other countries, while there is a wheat shortage in Afghanistan. In local markets in Pakistan, the price of rice has gone up over the past month by more than 60 per cent year on year. India recently contributed to soaring world prices when it imposed a ban on rice exports — relaxed only partially to allow some supplies to Madagascar, Mauritius, the Comoros Islands and cyclone-hit Bangladesh. China has banned rice exports to ensure enough is available for domestic demand.

From Kansas to Kabul, high rice and wheat prices are worrying officials and economists, and beginning to hit consumers — especially tens of millions of poor people — harder than many can remember. In Singapore, while rice importers and supermarkets have no problems getting the staple grain, prices have escalated.

Independent Bangladesh, Feb 21, 2008: Read the full story here.

The IRRI has announced some hope of relief in November 2005 in the form of transgenic rice. Two years later, the Philippine information agency SAMAR blessed the tested product, the ‘Phyto Nutrients Liquid Fertilizer’ to help every farmer/user in the country to achieve the highest farm output as part of the concept of a “Sustainable Farm Management Systems.” But when it comes to engineered seeds, the problem according to Checkbiotech.org (BASEL, SWITZERLAND) is that China strictly supervises its transgenic rice research and production, and no such seed has been approved for the market, according to agriculture officials in this most populated country of the world.

 It is a well-known fact that Greenpeace plays a leading role in a fight against enhanced maize and rice production using genetic engineering. In 2003, Greenpeace activists replaced the World Trade Organisation (WTO) sign at its headquarters in Geneva with a new logo, “World Transgenic Order”, denouncing the WTO for promoting the corporate interests of the genetic engineering (GE) industry. GP calls GE food ‘not sustainable’ up until now. Without making any final judgment on the GE issue, the word ’sustainability’ is controversal in itself. Who or which world power will weigh the future risk of mass starvation against the risk of new production technologies?

To make the food supply worse, the climate change propaganda machine entails scenarios of evacuation plans for all low lying coastal areas. They emphasize the threat of a severe sea level rise owing to a supposed runaway effect which accelerated melting, destabilizing ice shelfs along the Antarctic Westcoast and rapid melting on Greenland could cause. Greenpeace is of course not alone to alarm those rice producing Asian countries about this global threat. The World Bank (WB) has come up with its own scenario of a sea level rise of 1 m in Vietnam. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) in Vietnam has set up a steering board to deal with climate change-related matters in this country of large coastal plains. Huge amounts are being spent on research, such as the resistance of rice against salification and droughts, the planning of dykes against flash floods and the like. Needless to mention how much money is spent on research and mitigation efforts launched by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Vietnamnet reported.

Another driving factor for rising rice and maïse prices is the competition of land and water resources used up for the production of the more lucrative crops, like soy beans, palm oil and maïs for fuel production, which can also be attributed to the AGW propaganda. One example: Virgin Unite  is currently reviewing opportunities for micro-production of bio-fuel in villages and townships in South Africa. ’Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic flies biofuel-powered jumbo jet’ is the press release of February 24. Good bye food. What about the rainforest to conpensate for the lost productive land in other parts of the world? It’s all connected in a globalized world, isn’t it? All these recent developments increasingly contribute to the already critical supply of rice at affordable prices as the basic source of life for about 3 Billion people worldwide.