Rice

[Gonzo the Face]

I know we've all bitched some about the way prices have been going up.

I have heard that the price of rice has doubled DOUBLED since the 1st of the year.

...so now I am here to tell you that at Makro on the 2nd of Jan this year, 2008. a 5 Kilo bag of the rice I usually buy was 105 baht. As of today the same brand, same size at the very same store is 215 baht.

To me this all goes back to a little boy hollering wolf, and thinking he is god. WMD my azz

gonzo

[tigerbeer]

it doesn't end GTF.

[ollylama]

it doesn't end GTF.

the huge tragedy in burma is going to make things even harder on poor folks in thailand and the rest of asia. prices are going to go up quite a bit, apparently.

forget about subsidizing petrol (as the thai govt used to do) - they should subsidize rice!

but then of course, there would be hoarding, etc.

guess it's time to switch to bread pad gai. no kidding. probably cheaper.

[Tywais]

A fortuitous post. I was considering posting here on the same issue. My wife has a small Thai style restaurant catering mostly to students in the area. She has been doing pretty good with the business but started telling me about the problems now. The price of rice more then doubling, costs of eggs, etc. have her just breaking even now. She doesn't know whether to increase the dish prices due to concerns of losing customers. Several places around her specializing with pork dishes are closed down now due to price increases there.

I did some research on the Internet and find it is a global issue and not just here. You should see the futures markets, crazy. The Thai government said that they will place a 10% reduction in price of rice stocks but that was last month. They also said that the rice crop will be coming in this month and expected to be a good crop and prices will drop back. However, how often do you see shelf prices drop even when the source prices fall in Thailand? Pretty rare it seems to me.

Any ideas on how the wife can optimize on supplies? I asked if there was someplace she can buy in large quantities to reduce the price of the rice, but she said it's pretty much the same everywhere even in quantities.

I've been here 15 years, but things seem rather dire at the moment in terms of cost of living.

[ollylama]

I've been here 15 years, but things seem rather dire at the moment in terms of cost of living.

not just here. all over the world. people are killing each other in Africa over gruel. last year the economist magazine had a big article about how global food prices were going to soar and i sort of glossed over it. but the implications are staggering. food is the number one "must have" commodity. bleak.

[Tywais]

I've been here 15 years, but things seem rather dire at the moment in terms of cost of living.

not just here. all over the world. people are killing each other in Africa over gruel. last year the economist magazine had a big article about how global food prices were going to soar and i sort of glossed over it. but the implications are staggering. food is the number one "must have" commodity. bleak.

You're right. When I started looking into this I was startled at the depth of the problem globally. Stocks have been drying up and sells to other countries have been stopped or not excepted due to price gouging. The Philippines is one example via Vietnam attempts to sell.

[Ulysses G.]

To me this all goes back to a little boy hollering wolf, and thinking he is god. WMD my azz

Either that, or the effects of selling food crops for bio-fuels, and the fact that the Indians and Chinese are buying much more imported food than in the past and they both have a huge population.

It doesn't look good at the moment for sure.

[ollylama]

To me this all goes back to a little boy hollering wolf, and thinking he is god. WMD my azz

Either that, or the effects of selling food crops for bio-fuels, and the fact that the Indians and Chinese are buying much more imported food than in the past and they both have a huge population.

It doesn't look good at the moment for sure.

Yeah, I'm with UG. Actually, just about everyone is. That's pretty much the reason. Along with poor crop yields recently.

Guess it's time to start planting frankenfoods. It's better to be merely unhealthy than just plain starving to death. Save us Monsanto!

O

[cmsally]

Definitely rising prices and can't see them coming down.

We buy rice by the tank(sp?) which is around 20 litres. At the beginning of the year it was just over 300Bt and now over 500Bt

We buy it from the same place in Saraphi and prices are pretty much the same wherever. A lot of the sellers say most of their stock has been bought up (wholesalers?). So maybe people are hoarding?

Thought we would be smart and buy rice in Nan last week. Nope, same price there too .

Only need to do a quick search on the internet to see the many causes, one of which is the Chinese consuming a lot more than they used to.

On the news it was saying price of rice in Burma had doubled in the last 2 days! Now that must have been totally opportunist as they knew their would be sudden demand and they would be selling the same stock.

[realthaideal]

"guess it's time to switch to bread pad gai."

Dats funny Olly. But on another note, maybe not too crazy. I used to cook at this one place where we made a bread salad with rocket - 'something panzanella', was really tasty. And hey, maybe it's time to be rasin' yer own chickens and pigs off yer kitchen scraps if you got the room to do it. And then there's the free food under the lights this month. Time to acquire a taste for Maeng Mao, Maeng Man, and then some Maeng Jan for good measure (2 kinds of termites, maeng man having the fat, juicy, white asses, and maeng jan being what we call June Bugs back in sunny CA).

[mcgriffith]

We have a lot of brethren who live in Chiang Rai, or thereabouts outside of town...have a nice Thai style house with a few rai of paddy fields, a few pigs, some chickens and a kwai or 2.

Starting to sound like a good direction to go....

[Gonzo the Face]

We have a lot of brethren who live in Chiang Rai, or thereabouts outside of town...have a nice Thai style house with a few rai of paddy fields, a few pigs, some chickens and a kwai or 2.

Starting to sound like a good direction to go....

Had the same thought myself, just around the Golden Triangle area by the river.

gonzo

[PeaceBlondie]

My old mate told me yesterday that I really should try pad thai. Too late - can't afford rice. I will have to stay with Mike's Burgers and Miguel's enchiladas.

[bdenner]

I guess some of us, including me, are to blame turning rice farms into rubber, eucalyptus, palm oil etc. Our local rice traders have stopped stocking brown and the higher quality rice as they can't move it.

[Rasseru]

My old mate told me yesterday that I really should try pad thai. Too late - can't afford rice.

Great news for you, PB. You can try pad thai -- there is no rice in it!

[PeaceBlondie]

My old mate told me yesterday that I really should try pad thai. Too late - can't afford rice.

Great news for you, PB. You can try pad thai -- there is no rice in it!

Oh, darn - now I need another excuse. Just asked the boyfriend, and he says I would not like it.

I do eat a lot of steamed rice, and kaow paht gai. I guess I'm headed for the poor house. Two weeks ago, at Paparazzi's, I ordered kaow pat gai wrong, and I think the waiter brought me cow-paddy.

[ollylama]

My old mate told me yesterday that I really should try pad thai. Too late - can't afford rice.

Great news for you, PB. You can try pad thai -- there is no rice in it!

sadly there is. pad thai noodles are made from rice flour.

enchiladas it is! which reminds me of that jack handey "deep thought"

If, as the mystics say, God dwells in each of us,

I hope he likes enchiladas

Cause that's what he's getting!

[tigerbeer]

a lot of people making good money on the futures markets.. hate em !

[LuckyFive8888]

there will be a global war for food... scary stuff to think about.

[p1p]

I buy most of my rice from the large Godown on the Hang Dong road. Used to pay 325 Baht for a 45Kilo bag of broken brown rice (for the animals.) A month ago it had reached 850 or so, but a couple of days ago it was down to 725. Perhaps there might be light at tunnel's end.

The owner said the price of glutinous rice seems to have peaked, Jasmin rice is still rising. Mountain rice, normally expensive, is looking better value by the day.

[Jefferson]

It depends a bit.. Sure the top brands (Hong Thong, etc) are higher than 200 now, but there was another brand I quite liked, a variety of white rice with some dark brown rice grains mixed in that used to retail for around 100 baht, and bought 5 kilos of that for 119, so a very moderate increase. I also noticed Japanese rice was now about the same in price as the top Thai brands.

Edited May 9, 2008 by Jefferson

[Ulysses G.]

there will be a global war for food... scary stuff to think about.

What happened to we were all going to die from SARS and then two years later Chicken Flu for certain?

I think that it is better to wait and see.

[sylviex]

And hey, maybe it's time to be rasin' yer own chickens and pigs off yer kitchen scraps if you got the room to do it. And then there's the free food under the lights this month. Time to acquire a taste for Maeng Mao, Maeng Man, and then some Maeng Jan for good measure (2 kinds of termites, maeng man having the fat, juicy, white asses, and maeng jan being what we call June Bugs back in sunny CA).

There's a thread in the General forum titled something like "Tales from Isaan", talking about past hardships there, including food scarcity and the consequent resourcefulness of the locals.

Some also noted that just a few generations ago many people in developed countries had a capacity for resourcefulness and self-sufficiency, and a dislike of wastefulness and overindulgence. (Tales from the Great Depression or the WWs come to mind, but also from less extreme times.).

Time to re-think many of our habits, for sure.

[cmsally]

Brings back memories of my grandmothers tales from WW2 and rationing.

A cross between the Good Life and Dad's Army (for any Brits who remember those programs).

[Maejo Man]

Brings back memories of my grandmothers tales from WW2 and rationing.

I still have one of my old ration books

[p1p]

Moving to General - This is not particularly CM related.

[Rasseru]

Brings back memories of my grandmothers tales from WW2 and rationing.

I still have one of my old ration books

You make it sound like they rationed nappies. Surely things were never that desperate?

[JuniorExPat]

Came across this story:

Thailand to sell consumer-pack rice at lower price

JxP