Chicago, April 16 - The world rice market -- already seeing record prices -- should get set for further shocks since the kind of perfect storm that hit wheat prices earlier this year is brewing for rice, analysts said.
Chicago Board of Trade rough rice futures hit an all-time high on Wednesday when the July contract soared past $23 per hundredweight. That was double from a year ago.
Soaring rice prices have come as fears about tight world supplies led governments to hoard and ignited protests in places like Haiti, where five died in food riots last week.
"You've been drawing down the world stocks since 2000. You're down to the bottom of the barrel," said Ed Taylor analyst with Firstgrain.com, a market advisory service.
The U.S. government projects world stocks of rice to be 77 million tonnes by Aug. 1, the start of the new U.S. marketing year. That is up slightly on a year ago, based on projections for a 5 million tonne rise in world production. But world stocks will still be 48 percent below 2000.
This season's world production could also still be hurt by weather, leaving countries in need of imports at a time when many countries are already holding back on exports. India and Vietnam are two major suppliers who have banned exports.
India shut off the supply valve in October when it banned exports of non-basmati rice to its Asian neighbors that rely on rice as their main food staple. Thailand, the No. 1 rice exporter, stepped in to fill the gap, but soon found that it too was running short of rice.
U.S. BREADBASKET? NOT FOR RICE
In times of grain shortages, the world typically turns to the United States, the world's largest food exporter, for supplies as it has in the past for wheat, corn or soybeans.
But U.S. rice stocks have been cut in half the last two years. Rice acreage is being diverted to soaring corn, wheat and soybeans. But rice is also just not a major U.S. crop.
In 2007, the United States produced about 6 million tonnes of rice, out of total world production of 425 million tonnes.
"It's just a drop in the bucket," Taylor said. "We don't have anywhere near enough quantity to bail anybody out."
Bob Papanos, a former vice president with the U.S. Rice Producers Association and head of The Rice Trader, a weekly rice marketing publication, underscored the point.
"We've had declining stocks, declining stocks-to-use ratios for the last 15 years," he said of the current market. "It all came together and slapped the world in the face."
The United Nations' World Food Program on Tuesday said the price it pays for rice, the staple in many poor countries, to supply food donations jumped to $780 a tonne from around $460 a tonne at the beginning of March -- just after it made an emergency appeal for an extra $500 million from donor nations.
Rice could be even more volatile, since governments in many nations -- including across Asia's "rice bowl" -- consider rice not just a staple, but a national security priority.
RAGGED MARKETS, JAGGED NERVES
What makes rice supply/demand special is that almost all of the crop is consumed where it is grown. Only six percent of world rice is exported, compared with 17 percent for wheat, the other main food grain.
"The largest producing countries in the world of rice and wheat are India and China, who are also the largest consumers. So if you get a hiccup in either of those countries, the game is over," Papanos said.
In general, supply worries have haunted world grain markets for the last year. Rising population coupled with booming demand for grain-based fuels like ethanol have fed worries about shrinking acreage devoted to food and feed grains.
The result: price spikes in all grain commodities.
U.S. wheat futures prices jumped to a record $25 a bushel -- triple the former record -- in February as bread millers and importers scrambled for supplies on worries acreage would be stolen by corn or soybeans this year in the U.S. Midwest.
Futures markets structure has also fed the rallies.
Discouraged by slumping Wall Street stocks, a flood of "hot" speculative money has inflated grain futures. It now seems like rice has moved center stage for speculators. On Monday, CBOT's owner, the CME Group, decided to nearly double the number of positions speculators could hold in CBOT rice.
Key in coming weeks will be the impact of weather on crops in Thailand and Vietnam, which together account for half of all world rice exports. Even the U.S., the fourth largest exporter, is behind in planting its 2008 crop, which could cut yields.