With supplies dwindling and customers hoarding stocks, the US giant Wal-Mart and British stores are starting to restrict sales
Wal-Mart has said that its wholesale business had limited each customer to four bags of long-grain white rice per visit because of a shortage in supplies
Suzy Jagger in New York and David Charter in Brussels
British shopkeepers and the US retailer Wal-Mart have rationed rice sales to protect dwindling supplies.
The move by the world's biggest retailer, which owns Asda, constitutes the first time that food rationing has been introduced in the US. While Americans suffered some rationing during the Second World War for items such as petrol, light bulbs and stockings, they have never had to limit consumption of a key food item.
In Britain rice is being rationed by shopkeepers in Asian neighbourhoods to prevent hoarding. Tilda, the biggest importer of basmati rice, said that its buyers — who sell to the curry and Chinese restaurant trade as well as to families — were restricting customers to two bags per person. "It is happening in the cash-and-carries," said Jonathan Calland, a company executive. "I heard from our sales force that one lady went into a cash-and-carry and tried to buy eight 20kg bags."
Wal-Mart said that Sam's Club, its wholesale business, which sells food to restaurants and other retailers, had limited each customer to four bags of long-grain white rice per visit. In the past three months wholesalers have experienced a sharp rise in demand for food items such as wheat, rice and milk as businesses stocked up to protect themselves against rising prices.
Global rice prices have more than doubled in the past year partly because countries such as China and India — whose economies are booming — are buying more food from abroad. At the same time, key rice producers banned exports of rice to ensure that their own people could continue to afford to buy the staple: India, China, Vietnam and Egypt have all blocked exports and so demand for rice from countries such as the United States has increased.
Costco Wholesale, the largest warehouse operator in America, said this week that demand for rice and flour had risen, with customers panicking about shortages and hoarded produce.
Tim Johnson, of the California Rice Commission, said: "This is unprecedented. Americans — particularly in states such as California — have on occasion walked into a supermarket after a natural disaster and seen that the shelves are less full than usual, but we have never experienced this."
Food prices across the world have rocketed in the past two years, driven by increased demand for corn — the grain that is fermented to produce ethanol, the biofuel. With corn a main foodstock in dairy farming, milk has doubled in price in two years.
Growing awareness of global food shortages have exposed a deep divide in Europe over how best to guarantee supplies.
Germany joined France yesterday in demanding that the European Union maintain huge subsidies paid to farmers. The EU pays €42 billion (£34 billion) a year to farmers through the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Britain has called for its removal, claiming that it distorts the food market at vast expense to taxpayers. Berlin argued that the global food scare showed the need for subsidies to continue beyond 2013, when reforming nations, led by Britain, want to scrap payments that prop up unviable farms.
In a further assault on Britain's policy of liberalisation, German ministers also backed French opposition to Peter Mandelson's direction of world trade talks. The Trade Commissioner is offering cuts in EU farm subsidies to trigger concessions from other trading blocs, but Paris and Berlin believe that he has gone too far in chasing a global deal at a time of protectionist pressures.
Under a concession won in 2005 by Tony Blair in exchange for a cut in Britain's EU rebate, an EU budget review will begin this year. Farm payments in the form of the CAP budget and the ¤10 billion rural development budget are up for debate.
Germany said that a rush to cut subsidies could leave the EU unable to feed itself. "We have to make sure that we can provide this continent with food sustainability and make sure that we produce enough to combat poverty in the developing world," Horst Seehofer, the German Agriculture Minister, said.
President Sarkozy of France has pledged to reform the CAP but has yet to give details and is under immense pressure from farmers to continue their handouts. Mr Seehofer added: "In the future we will have food conflicts . . . and we have to make sure that the population here is fed at prices that are affordable. Food security is a demand of our population."
British diplomats in Brussels dismissed the food security argument. "You cannot spend 45 per cent of the EU budget on 5 per cent of the population who produce 3 per cent of the EU's output," one said.
THE GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS
Melksham, Wiltshire
It is mid-morning and the car park of the Aldi supermarket in Melksham, Wiltshire, is almost full. The German chain is benefiting from increases in food prices, welcoming customers who previously shopped at Sainsbury's or Somerfield.
Paul and Tracy Jones are new faces at Aldi, having driven six miles from their home in Corsham. They have a monthly food budget of £400 for themselves and their three children. Paul said: "We have definitely noticed the increase in food prices. Everything has gone up, even here. We are paying 30p to 40p more for a chicken than we were a year ago."
Lake Naivasha camp, Kenya
Virginia Ndungu, a 55-year-old mother of eight, watches her daughter stir a blackened pot of cornmeal gruel in front of a tent in a refugee camp where they have lived since January (Nick Wadhams writes). This is tonight's meal, and there will be no bread, no meat, and no tea.
Camps like this are the front line in the global crunch over rising food prices. "I have nothing, not even ten cents – how can I afford sugar for porridge," said Ms Ndungu, who farmed chickens but was displaced during Kenya's postelection violence.
Brasilia, Brazil
Like hundreds of shoppers who crowd into Guara market on the outskirts of Brazil's capital, Brasilia, Antonia da Souza complained about the startling increases in the cost of food (Gabriella Gamini writes). "The price of rice has doubled, bread too. Tomatoes have tripled and black beans are 30 per cent more expensive," she said. "I would have to spend three times as much I used to six months ago to get my weekly shopping needs, but salaries have not gone up so I can only half fill my shopping basket."
Bombay, India
Every morning the price of milk sends Shankar Vemula into a state of despondency (Rhys Blakely writes). Mr Vemula, 40, a driver, lives with his wife, five children and his parents-in-law in a tiny one-room house. "Our morning litre of milk now costs 35 rupees (45p)," Mrs Vemula says. Three months ago it cost 18 or 20 rupees. The cost of everyday staples has soared. A bunch of spinach used to cost one or two rupees in the market, now it is seven or eight rupees, Mrs Vemula says. Brinjal, or aubergine, an Indian favourite, is now 30 rupees per kilogram – six months ago it was 15 rupees.
No comments:
Post a Comment