World rice production is up, but demand is up more. Production gains are not keeping up with population growth and increased consumption.

Where is all this new demand coming from that wouldn't have begun outstripping supply last year or the year before that? Population growth hasn't been explosive in the already over-populated regions of the world where rice is both the traditional staple and major agricultural commodity.

Japan over-produces rice, but can't really export (until now, perhaps) because it's government propped price has always been way higher than the average global price (something of a disconnect since not all rice is the same).

The U.S. eats relatively little rice and exports most of our crop.

Both the Japanese and Chinese eat a lot of wheat noodles, but the explanation for the shortage here has nothing to do with rice, and makes no sense anyway since wheat and corn are best produced in different climates. Therefore, increased ethanol production can't be used as an excuse for shortages of either.

Cambodia, before the end of the Vietnam War and the beginning of the Khmer Rogue regime, had been a next exporter. I have no idea what they do today. The same was once true of Thailand.

I hadn't read of any major crop failures last year, and this year's crop is just now sprouting or being transplanted the northern latitudes.

Not one for economic conspiracies, but there is more at work here than demand outstripping supply.

The Chinese, as the Russians, chose the easy path out of their failed command economy and how they have loosened social restrictions (politics is still meaningless). Both countries, particularly China starting from virtually no meaningful industrial base, could have looked forward (by looking no further back than the 1970s and seeing what the unchecked rise of consumerism did in the West and Japan) and seen that hitching their economic wagons to West's consumer capitalism model have sown the seeds for their own dives. What automobile in most prized in the new China? The Cadillac Escalade.

Rather than looking to the West, China should have taken more lessons from Singapore. Obviously, the scales are about as different as can be. But Singapore's benign dictatorship with a strong sense of general social welfare would have served them well. But like the nouveau rich everywhere, the Chinese know the price of everything and, apparently, the value of nothing. The country has just swung from one idiotic extreme to another. The Beijing Olympics will be an unmitigated disaster.

. . . as it is being allowed to die a slow painful death.

I would LOVE to see massive development of rail in this country, and I wish the rail system hadn't collapsed to the extent it has (which happened a good 20 years or so before I was born, a good 40 before I started driving). -- area woman

The U.S. passenger rail system was twenty years out of date in the 1970s when the government took it over from the rail companies. The car and, over the last twenty years, cheap airfares made trains too slow, costly and inconvenient by comparison.

The Japanese unveiled, with a feverish effort, the "bullet train" just prior to the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics. The continental Europeans weren't far behind with their high speed intercity trains.

Japan's shinkansen is into its third-generation of engines, and you can now ride it from the northern tip of Honshu (main island) to the northeastern tip of Kyushu. A trip from Tokyo to Osaka, a distance of about 350 air miles, takes lest than 2-1/2 hours by express. You can't fly from Seattle to Portland (including the time spent getting to and from and wasted in the airport) in that amount of time, and the shinkansen delivers you to the heart of the city.

Again, it's something that could be replicated here if we chose to spend money on things other than space exploration, wars and fiscally foolish but financial insignificant tax cuts for the already wealthy.

A nation-wide high-speed intercity rail system may come yet when the price of oil makes personal gas or diesel powered personal transport unaffordable for anyone but the super rich. But we may be so impoverished as a nation at that point that it will impossible to pay for it.

Having outsourced most of its work overseas, globalization finally bites. Having drained money out of U.S. economy, Microsoft faces lower sales and prospect of lower prices in the U.S.-- semionb

Microsoft peaked ten years ago. It is now a mature company and like all successful mature companies they are past their remarkable growth phase. PC sales have been fairly flat now as the world wide market has been as saturated as it can be at present.

Microsoft employs over 40,000 people in the U.S., which is a huge number for a software company. I have no idea where you get the idea that they have "outsourced most of its work overseas." They are again expanding the Redmond campus. Microsoft's biggest problem, supposedly, is having a large enough talent pool to draw from in the U.S.

Current Employment Headcount

Location Employees

Worldwide 78,565

USA 47,645

Puget Sound

Washington) 35,510

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/inside_ms.mspx

. . . the U.S. doesn't import rice. We are a net exporter.

When cheap oil gives way to peak oil, this African rice is going to be too expensive for Americans to buy. How about we all plant our own damn rice? -- coyotebum

http://www.sagevfoods.com/MainPages/Rice101/Production.htm