Letters to the Editor
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wouldn't export restrictions cause the domestic price to fall not rise?
The major rice producers that are also the major rice exporters should only see domestic warehousing of overstock as a result. This would tend, in the very short run to cause some periodic hoarding, driving up the price but then the price tends to fall to work off the inventories and the costs that warehouses have to bear to keep the product in inventory. Unless you genuinely believe that there's going to be a famine or a prolonged production crash soon.
The real issue is the economic dynamics of a CASH crop in those markets. 30 years ago, those were subsistence farmers who ate their own product. When prices were high or low it didn't matter as long as there was enough to eat. With cash crops the farmers have to rely on stable increasing prices in order to get paid enough to pay to bring the crop in and have enough left over to buy all the goods he needs to live. And because cash cropping is about efficiency, the farmer has layout crop rents for fertilizer, pesticides and equipment. If the price and or the yield doesn't cover that, the farmer goes broke AND hungry.
So, clearly some engine of subsidies is required. One to bolster the return to the farmer and One to stabilize the price to the consumer.