India had a scorching summer and now heavy rains in many parts of the country. The government is just being prudent and ensuring sufficient local stock.
Just last harvest states like Telangana had a glut of rice with no buyers. And now we have this. The whole procurement and storage chain is hopelessly mismanaged in India.
For all those saying that this due to the climatic conditions, you’ll are only semi-wrong (/jk), as it has to do with political climate instead with the upcoming elections next year (those in power want to appease their electorate base with lower rice prices). This is also the second time this has occurred, the previous time it was from the other ruling party, and them by enacting the rice export ban then, put a lot of rice factories out of business due to the ensuing demand shock (I know someone whose entire family business of multiple factories had to shut down for good due to this).
I expect the trend to continue and get worse. India is on the verge of having serious issue with its food supply. To keep its share of importation stable, given the current population growth, the country needs its production to grow by 20% (by weight) in the next 25 years. That’s basically a bit more than 1% a year. The potential is definitely there but as far as I know the growth has been slightly under target for the past few years. I fully expect imports to rise and exports to be banned more and more often for the foreseeable future. Famine is unlikely but definitely a risk.
It seems like a no brainer that western powers should defend the transport of Ukrainian grain. The shortage of food is going to cause such an immense problem in states like in Africa. Europe is going to have a terrible time with this.
With global warming hitting hard, many countries can no longer afford to export food for various reasons.<p>This is true given the US’s case where we still export animal feed that was grown in the desert.