Are you stocking up on rice?

We do and I'm back in Ireland, probably locked up in Kilmainham by now.

 

People hording rice in the U.S. is a bit weird, as the L.A. Times and N.Y. Times pointed out earlier in the week. The U.S. is one of the world's biggest rice growers, yet one of the smallest consumers. The domestic hording appears to be a cultural phenomena that appears to have traveled by word-of-mouth. The domestic rice price hasn't inceased, doesn't appear it will. The run on the rice, in many cases, is coming from family-owned small restaurants. It's a fascinating story.

 

Classic case of panic buying.

People who haven't cooked a rice dish in a decade are lining up in the rice aisles.

Like the flu shot shortage a few years ago. People were coming out of the woodwork with their sleeves rolled up.

 

Right. It's not necessarily individuals at whom the 80-pound limit is aimed. It's restaurants, particularly small ones, who are the most likely to shop at Sam's/Costco. In that business, it would make sense to buy several hundred or even several thousand pounds in advance. If you can buy three months' worth, and in that time the price goes up 25 percent, you've saved a goodly amount. With profit margins as thin as they are, every bit helps.

And in a further example of the domino effect, many of the affected restaurants are small Mexican or Chinese places, the owners of which are sending money back to family still living in the homeland. Their profits go down, the problem gets worse over there, it exacerbates the problems over here, etc, etc.

It's a mess.