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Tight global rice supply to persist into next year
- bell-cot 3y agoNoteworthy: The article mentions (bulk, agricultural) rice prices of ~$16 per hundredweight - which is about 16 cents (US) per pound. Vs. what price did you last pay at the grocer, when you purchase a bag of rice? One might think that the food distribution industry is over-ripe for some very disruptive disintermediation...
- hollerith 3y agoAre you sure that that is not the price of rice before drying, cleaning, sorting, hulling, milling, polishing and sorting again?
- bell-cot 3y agoLooking at the only-slightly-wider chasm between the ag. commodity price of wheat, and the retail price of wheat grains - note that wheat needs less than 1/2 of the steps you list - I'm thinking that the actual processing only justifies a tiny fraction of the markup for rice.
- hollerith 3y agoSince "Sorting" means removal of pieces of stem and such and milling removes the hulls, the price per pound is sure to increase more that a tiny fraction unless the pieces of stem or the hulls are valuable, which I doubt. Also, "drying" sounds like it could easily halve the weight of a grain of rice. Unlike wheat, rice spends its life in a very wet environment.
- spking 3y agoAverage U.S. retail price looks to be about 96 cents per pound. https://www.bls.gov/regions/mid-atlantic/data/averageretailfoodandenergyprices_usandmidwest_table.htm https://www.bls.gov/regions/mid-atlantic/data/averageretailf...