To agree that Indians should keep their rice.

[orangeleavesinautumn]

Of course Indians should not be going hungry while the rest of the world eats the rice they have grown- that is madness.

They should keep and eat their own rice, and the rest of the world should eat something else - we have other cheap food in the UK, carrots, potatoes, bread, etc - we absolutely do not need to be eating Indian rice while Indians have nothing to eat.

I understand there is a problem where other populations rely on cheap rice imports, but we don't so I can't understand why anyone in the UK feels hard done by missing out on non premium rice

How many people in the UK buy the rice affected by this ban? I would think most buy basmati rice. Which is not affected.

I think it would affect a significant and disproportionate number of non-white people, as the bulk bags/sacks of rice in shops that aren't Sainsbury's tend not to be 500g of Tilda Basmati and nothing else.

Yes, it will. I am not white and buy my rice in 5 kg bags from the Asian grocer. But frankly, India needs to look after its own, not the diaspora. Monsoons were erratic this year, lacking in some places and too heavy in others. And elections next year.

Err yes obviously, so obviously I didn't think it needed stating

This incident aside I think we need to switch the conversation pdq to security generally

We seem to be stuck on the net zero message as some far off nice place to be. It’s not that it’s closer and getting ready for what’s coming up should be higher than pretty much most things.

You are right OP.
Of course you already know that.
Let the Indian and Chinese restaurants adapt their menus to using ingredients only grown in this country.

😉😁😁😁

Thanks for your reply, I wonder if a Conservative government would have the balls to put price control back onto essential foods, without it you can't really compare future food shortages with how things were back then, even though profiteering is illegal the increases in food prices just over the last few years of the Ukraine war have been eye opening.

Also saying vegetables were not rationed, according to the GOV article I posted before we now import more fruit and veg than we do meat and grains, so it would actually be more likely for these to be rationed, and people don't have teh skills and space to dig for victory.

Thirdly I wonder where all the UPFs we eat these days would sit in the rationing process, things like fish fingers and frozen chips. Lots of ready meals seem to be made on the continent and then shipped over to us.

It's all really sobering tbh, I think if the current issues with extreme weather and war in europe continue we are going to be spending a LOT more on food in future years.

I would imagine that if demand for Indian rice decreased, a number of Indian rice producers would stop producing altogether as the price they would get in the domestic market wouldn’t be attractive enough for them.

Why do I get the impression that op is writing a dissertation on mumsnet?

Yes Putin wants Africa to starve so that he can blame the West to pressurise us to end the war.

Or so people flee to Europe destabilising further

Yes exactly this.

You are kind and thoughtful and caring and tolerant, pat pat. Don't forget to post on your actual social media along with I've had my 89th jab for a mild flu like illness.
Everyone will think how kind and thoughtful you are and not at all will think you an ignorant and slightly dim control freak of a virtue signaller

100% this.

This what I say all the time and I think people see me as crazy. I feel the same way about coffee grown in Costa rica for example, or chocolate grown somewhere exotic or any other luxury food to be shipped out to the wealthier nations of the world. That land could be used to grow food to feed their own people. We have appropriated their land, their labour force and their resources for our luxuries whereas all of these countries will be struggling to feed their own populations. Surely the native people have a greater right to benefit from their own resources?

And no, us paying for it is not a fair trade. You can't eat money after all.

It's without doubt the new face of colonialism, we don't even have to inconvenience ourselves to go over there, the fruits of their labour comes to us, hassle free.

well we are, supermarkets already running very low around here

I wish these threads would come with a link to whatever news article it is based on as I know nothing about stealing rice from Indians.

Thank you.
I'm surprised at the ignorance here. India has not stopped exporting premium Basmati rice which makes India money and is the product that is mostly consumed out of India.
With regards to export to Africa, I'm sure they will have a separate discussion. It will be the same situation that had happened previously when COVID was raging. UK, US and Europe were stockpiling vaccines whereas India was the only nation which was exporting vaccines to African nations at cost price.
For those questioning India's low cost moon mission, the reason why India is on the rising trajectory is because of investments in science, engineering and technology in building supercomputers and satellites which revolutionised the way farmers could predict weather and information technology boomed.

No one is stealing rice - the Indian government has decided to ban exports of non Basmati rice, due to needing it to feed India's own population, meaning less cheap rice available to the rest of the world -and as you can see from this thread, some people are worried about their takeaways etc.....

My point is, it is their right to stop exporting food they have grown, it is sensible to ensure they can feed their own population first, and people in the UK should stop moaning about it and eat something else.

@SugarAndSpiceIsNice India have already taken on Sri Lanka to feed. It depends on how bad the harvests are, there may or may not be enough to help Africa.

The thing is the rice that comes out of India is for the export market and if they stopped that they'd loose money on the export of rice and the profit that would bring .. there are other countries that export rice not just India , like Thailand many of the big sacks of rice in Asian / Chinese supermarkets come from Thailand.

I found an article from 2020 that said 15% of your rice imports were from the U.S.
When I searched for 2023 U.S. top rice exports, the U.K. wasn’t on the list.

https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/commodities/rice

My apologies, @Guiltyfeethavegotnorhythm0.
That U.S. rice export info was for you.

🙄

There’ve been massive changes in agricultural technology since WW2. We couldn’t have fed ourselves then. We can now.

Google ‘Green Revolution’ for a basic introduction.

In 2021, the UK imported $587M of rice becoming the 11th largest importer of rice in the world. UK imports rice primarily from: India ($197M) or 33.5% by value, Pakistan ($113M) or 19.25%, Italy ($60.2M), Netherlands ($34M), and Spain ($31.9M).

Rice in United Kingdom | OEC - The Observatory of Economic Complexity