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Climate change has ravaged India’s rice stock. Now its export ban could deepen a global food crisis (www.cnn.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Newly planted rice saplings have been underwater since July after torrential rain battered northern India, with landslides and flash floods sweeping through the region.

Last month, India, which is the world’s largest exporter of rice, announced a ban on exporting non-basmati white rice in a bid to calm rising prices at home and ensure food security. India then followed with more restrictions on its rice exports, including a 20% duty on exports of parboiled rice.

The move has triggered fears of global food inflation, hurt the livelihoods of some farmers and prompted several rice-dependent countries to seek urgent exemptions from the ban.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

countries that import a lot of rice will be hit pretty hard by this - for example, China actually imports rice. yes, I was surprised by that as well. to the tune of over 5 million tons annually, that's 10 billion pounds of rice per year. and that's just one country - see the 2nd set of figures here to see how much Indian rice was imported into China in 2022.

the Philippines imports about half as much rice as China does. Iran, Iraq, and the UAE arent that far behind.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So a rough estimate of 1600 kcals per pound of rice, 10 billion pounds, assuming daily intake of 2000 kcals, that's roughly the yearly calories of about 22 million people (assuming I didn't fuck up somewhere). To put it in perspective.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

i didnt go that far into the math, but one of the websites I was looking at said that the average Chinese consumes ~220lbs of rice a year, and that's like 45.4 million average people. presumably China will tap into their national rice reserve...