I wrote before on my fears of the food crisis ahead. Now that the IMF woke up, the news is allover. Even Belgian vegetables are becoming increasingly expensive. But that's nothing compared to the upcoming surge of rice prices of 30%. Today the news announced that Egypt is stopping export of its rice. But Egypt is a tiny producer of rice, with onlt 3800 '000 metric tonnes.
Do you know which country is the biggest non-Asian producer of rice? Guess. Yes, it's Brazil. With 7800 '000 metric tonnes, it's bigger than the US (5.900 '000 metric tonnes) and much bigger than the EU (1.792 '000 metric tonnes).
Oil, sugar, meat, rice, bananas, coffee, iron, ... it's hard to think of a commodity in which Brazil is not a net exporter.
Trust me, the impact of the food crisis is way bigger than that of the credit crisis, no, this is nt my apocalyptic warning.
