Since the end of 2019, the world has been on a date with many crises. The beginning was with the global health crisis, the “Corona” pandemic, which showed a shortage of resources at all levels across the world, in addition to the wheat crisis that erupted against the backdrop of the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war; This made the international market apprehensive about the repetition of the scenario of the rice crisis that erupted in 2008, along with the current gas and wheat crisis.
In the year 2007, without introduction, the state of Vietnam imposed a ban on its commercial exports of rice, despite its abundant stocks, as the world rice production was considered the largest at the time; But the Vietnamese decision had internal reasons, the most important of which was the increase in food prices, which amounted to 19 percent.
To counter these increases, Vietnam supplied the domestic supply of rice, which it produces, instead of the wheat it imported, whose price increased by 87 percent between 2007 and 2008.
A month later, India in turn imposed a ban on its rice exports, citing the same policy of controlling food prices. At the beginning of 2008, Egypt, Cambodia, Brazil, China, Indonesia, and Burma joined Vietnam and India, which banned their rice exports.
Bans and restrictions on exports of rice have caused panic that prompted governments to acquire abundant quantities of this substance from anywhere in the world; Such as the Philippines, which bought in four months the amount it consumes typically for a year, as well as Saudi Arabia, which raised the proportion of its imports of rice to 90 percent.
Between high prices and limited resources, the imbalances of power and economy appear.
Despite the stability of the rice market, some developments indicate the possibility of repeating the 2008 scenario. Among the most prominent of these developments is that at the end of May, the Sri Lankan Minister of Agriculture, Mahinda Amaraweera, called on every farmer who has land to plant rice, on the grounds that the situation is getting worse every day. Day and there is not enough money to buy rice from abroad.
On June 8, Indonesian President Joko Widodo delivered a speech in front of an Indonesian farmers' gathering in Central Java province, one of the most important of which was: "Brothers and sisters, please grow rice."
In terms of numbers, there is no shortage; In the current harvest season 2021-2022, it is expected that 510 million tons will be harvested globally, which is the same amount of global consumption for the same period. Also, global stocks of rice are expected to reach 190.5 million tons, so why worry?
The main concern stems from the lack of confidence and doubts that hover over the smooth movement of global trade during the recent period, as the exporter can cut off supplies from the importer for any reason; Which loses confidence in global market movements, and makes each country preserve its resources for itself, which is reflected in the high prices internationally and locally.
The best proof of this is what India, as the second largest producer of wheat, did last May, when it banned its exports at a critical time when the world was in dire need of every grain of wheat, especially with the Russian and Ukrainian wheat almost leaving the international market due to the ongoing war.
In the event that the countries producing and exporting rice globally decided to ban their exports by imposing restrictions on them in order to dispense with wheat as a policy to address the wave of high prices locally, the rest of the countries in general and the Arab countries, in particular, will have to allocate areas for rice cultivation so that the 2008 scenario is not repeated.