Southeast Asia faces food shortages

COMMUNITIES in Southeast Asia face serious food shortages after flooding devastated rice paddies and other crops from the start of September and aid deliveries were disrupted, the United Nations has said.

About 12.5 percent of the rice farmland in Thailand has been damaged, along with 6 percent in the Philippines, 12 percent in Cambodia, 7.5 percent in Laos and 0.4 percent in Vietnam, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization says in an Oct. 21 report.

Crop losses might help sustain a 17-percent rally in rice futures in Chicago this year, adding pressure on food costs, and creating more problems for governments across Asia, where the grain is the main staple, said Lynette Tan, an analyst at Phillip Futures Pte.

The UN Food Price Index of 55 commodities including cereals, meat, sugar and dairy rose to a record in February.

“Given that flooding in Thailand is not really getting any better… there could be some room for prices to go up,” Tan said by phone from Singapore.

Thailand, the world’s largest rice exporter, was forecast to account for 31 percent of the 34.2-million metric tons of global trade of the grain this year, the US Department of Agriculture said. Vietnam is the second-largest shipper, while the Philippines was the largest buyer last year.

Rough-rice for January delivery rose 0.5 percent to close at $16.715 per 100 pounds on the Chicago Board of Trade on Oct. 21.

The export price for the 100-percent grade B Thai white rice, the benchmark in Asia, gained 1 percent to $625 per metric ton on Oct. 19, taking gains this year to 13 percent.

Thailand might lose 6 million tons of rough-rice from the flooding, paring the main harvest to 19 million tons, Apichart Jongskul, secretary-general of the Office of Agricultural Economics, said Oct. 21.

The damage estimate did not include rice stored in warehouses that had been submerged in floodwaters, he said.

Thailand’s main harvest, which typically accounts for 70 percent of annual production, was forecast by the government at 25.8 million tons before the floods.

The Philippines lost almost 600,000 tons of milled rice from the typhoons that struck the country, Lito Banayo, administrator of the National Food Authority, said Oct. 20. That’s equal to almost 17 days of demand, based on the national daily consumption. -Luzi Ann Javier, Manila Standard Today, Bloomberg