Try telling my local curry house there’s a world shortage of rice, writes Rural Affairs Editor Nathan Rous, a shortage which is fuelling riots on the streets and forcing governments to ban exports.
Last week, the same as ever, our telephone conversation went like this.
“Do you want any rice with your meal, sir?”
“Not today, friend,” I replied, knowing the naan breads were a perfect complement to the masala.
“Are you sure? Our house pilau is excellent.”
I buckle. “Okay then. A portion of rice it is.”
“Just the one portion, sir?”
I’m sorely tempted to take the latest findings from the International Rice Research Institute and staple it to their tablecloths. For the IRRI has warned that demand is outstripping production as land for producing rice and irrigation water is being lost to industrialisation and urbanisation.
Add to this the growing appetite among Asia’s burgeoning urban middle class for meat and dairy products and it’s no wonder the paddy fields are shrinking.
But it’s not just rice which is going through the roof: soybeans, corn and wheat have also reached historic highs.
Given that rice is the staple food for half the global population, this month’s bloody uprising in Haiti where the starving masses have been forced to eat cakes made out of nothing but soil and cooking oil is a taste of things to come, albeit not a very nice one.
While at the moment it may be far enough away for you to ignore, it won’t be long before each and every one of us is affected too.
This probably has rather apocalyptic overtones for those of you waiting for Uncle Ben to ping in the microwave (if it’s in an orange bag it’s fine but if it’s in an orange suit you’ve got the wrong Uncle Ben), but Western arrogance won’t be enough to save you this time.
Whether it’s bread, pasta, pizza, rice, meat, dairy products, veg, fruit or fish, the competition for space on Planet Earth means each one going up at the till.
But as we heard from Bridgnorth architect Vic Johnson last week that we’re in danger of making the credit crunch worse if we just sit on our hands, the same goes for the food crunch: there is definitely something you can do about it.
Whether you have an acre, a shoebox, a windowbox or even a ledge, growing your own fruit and vegetables may become a necessity rather than a passion solely for the green-fingered.
Yes, the air-raid sirens have long been silenced and, no, you can’t grow ready-made fish ‘n’ chips, but if you want to avoid the steady rise in prices then the answer could lie outside your back door.
Jamie Oliver has shown how you can grow tomatoes in a baked-bean tin so there’s no excuse not to roll up those sleeves and get your hands dirty.
With garden centres reporting a 20 per cent rise in grow-your-own products the shift from relying on your supermarket to relying on your own expertise could well give us an advantage when it comes to the crunch.
Given the level of rainfall we’ve endured over the last 12 months you may even be able to grow your own rice.
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