The Rice Snack

I’ve heard about the rice problem for several weeks, but I’ve never acted on it or tried to stock up on rice products. One reason is that I’ve been busy and haven’t paid attention to what is happening around me for a while. Another reason is that whenever I step into the Asian grocery stores, the prices of the big packages of rice, from 15 pounds to 50 pounds each, stay relatively stable. Probably one or two dollars higher than before, but that is considered normal in the age of inflation and uncertainty.

So I’ve been telling myself that our rice mostly comes from California, which has received plenty of rain and snow in the past year or so and will have no problem of producing normal amount of rice.

However I went to the 99 Ranch store yesterday and was shocked to find that all the rice noodles, rice papers, rice snacks were gone. The usual shelves for rice derivative products were stuffed with non-rice snacks. I don’t usually visit these shelves unless my stocks run out, which is about one visit every three months. And yesterday was the end of the three-month timeline and I suddenly realized that there was nothing available.

It really makes sense that now I think of it. Although our big bags of rice come from California, most of our rice noodles, papers, snacks come from South or Southeast Asia, where the looming rice shortage must have caused the cutback on the export of rice derivative products.

“I am munching on my favorite seaweed rice crisps right now. I went out and bought two big boxes of it several weeks ago, which will last for six months or so I think. I hope six months later, the crisis will be over.” My friend chuckled.

“Because people like you binge shopping on rice, people like me can’t have any… Anyway, can you sell me some of yours?” I asked.

“Of course not. Not even you double or triple the price.” She said.

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Image by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay