A Rice Crisis Is Boiling

Rice is life itself in Southeast Asia, and this year there is not enough to go around. Freakishly bad weather last year has turned the region's usual bare sufficiency into severe shortage. The result: smuggling, hoarding, soaring prices and hungry people.

Thailand, a traditional supplier, has left her rice-buying neighbors in panic by halting exports to fill her own needs. China, usually an exporter, has also cut back sales because of a poor harvest last year. Because of the war, South Viet Nam must still rely heavily on buying U.S. rice.

Indonesia and the Philippines face the worst shortages, but wealthier Hong Kong and Singapore also are hard put to find supplies. Prices have rocketed to $325 a ton, almost four times the 1971 world price. Along with gold and other valuable cargo, smugglers are carrying rice as they ply to Singapore from Indonesia, where rice prices are low.

To ease the crisis, many Asians are looking to the U.S. 1973 crop—perhaps in vain. Spring flooding in the Mississippi Valley ravaged the rice fields. Planting was late, and yields may be low. The Nixon Administration has announced that exports of grains, including rice, may be curbed to keep domestic prices in line. If the U.S. will not export rice, Southeast Asians will have to look to their own resources, tighten their collective belts, and hope that better weather later this year will revive the "green revolution" that was to solve their chronic food shortage.