The r-word.

You may have heard that there are some chains - and it's not entirely clear if it's just in SoCal or if it's elsewhere - that are limiting rice purchases (so far it looks like Costco and Sam's Club.) This is because there's apparently a shortage of rice, or at least rice from parts of southeast Asia.

(the rice I tend to buy comes from Texas; I haven't heard anything about problems with the rice crop there).

The news stories - I'm not going to link any because the few that I found and read irritated me and I don't feel like finding one that doesn't - refer to it as "rationing."

There are also dark allusions to "flour and cooking oil are being 'rationed' in Queens, NY." (I have no confirmation on that last one.)

Okay. This is where I get really irritated at those who write these things up.

The word "rationing" has a lot of connotations to it. Those who remember WWII faced some food rationing (it was MUCH worse in Great Britain than it was here; I'm reading a book currently on conditions in WWII and post-WWII Great Britain and it's moderately shocking how little people were permitted during the worst of it. Oh, I understand the reasons why - it's still shocking.)

I don't see this as "rationing." My understanding of the WWII situation is that in Great Britain, it was because shipping lanes were largely blockaded - and it is a challenge for an island nation to grow enough food to support itself. Not to mention the fact that a lot of the young, able-bodied folk who would normally bring in the harvest were either in the military forces or working defense jobs. (Hence the "Land Girls." My parents have a friend who - though she doesn't use that term - from her description of what she did as a teenager in WWII in Britain, I think she must have been a Land Girl. I don't like to ask her more about it because she doesn't seem to want to bring up those memories, as fascinating as they are to me.)

In the U.S., I think lot of it had to do with companies re-tooling for defense production (no tin cans) and also, the desire to supply the fighting forces (and also land-lease countries) with food.

I suppose you could also make the argument that the sacrifice made people feel more that there "was a war on" (and of course things like gasoline and tires and nylon were rationed as well).

I see the current situation as being a lot more akin to the situation with the Nintendo Wii than I do with true rationing. Here is a product that is in (hopefully) temporarily short supply, you want to ensure that people get a fair crack at getting it, so you limit how much any one person can buy (and I believe the limit was something like 80 lbs. of rice, so unless you're a restaurant owner, you're not going to really face problems. I don't know how fast an average, say, Japanese-American family eats up rice, but 80 pounds is a whopping great lot of rice, in my book).

It's also not unlike what some groceries do with "loss leader" specials - limit quantities purchased so that Jane Doe (who comes in to shop at 8 am) buys up all the cheap hotdogs, and Joe Blow (who can't come in until, say, noon) gets angry because they're all gone.

But I do not see it as "rationing." And I think it was irresponsible for the news outlets - and whoever used it first - to use that word.

(And here is a story (warning: popup ads) that discusses the Texas rice crop. And breathes a little sense into what's going on.

The rice that is "limited" are two "aromatic" varieties (jasmine and basmati) which are grown in East Asia. There is no shortage of Texas-milled rice, the article says, but it is considered a "less desirable" sort by the (primarily immigrant) community that is heavily buying rice.

I don't know - the rice I use is a Texas-grown version of basmati and it's pretty darn good. And I think I've had jasmine rice that was grown in this country. True, you pay a little premium for it - but here is where I tend to get a bit jingoistic - I prefer to buy food grown in my own country whenever possible. Both for reasons of "US farmers get paid" and for reasons of "there's unlikely to be some kind of funky pesticide illegal in the US in there.")

But anyway. A lot of news outlets NOT AS CLOSE to the concept of growing rice as the Beaumont (TX) Enterprise is, are using the "rationing" word.


Because "rationing" is one of those OH NOES! words. One of those words that makes the inner survivalist come out in some people. (I admit it; it nearly did in me when I first heard the news. Before I thought it through, I thought, "Maybe I better run out to the grocery and buy some rice, just to have." Never mind that I don't eat rice daily, never mind that I have a barely-opened 3-pound tub of "Texmati" rice, never mind that were I live, if you don't freeze or refrigerate grain products you're going to store long-term, they will get buggy after a while. It caused that knee-jerk reaction in me and when I figured it out, I got annoyed).

Because that word is going to bring out the same instinct in a lot of people. The limits were put into place to ensure everyone got a supply and to prevent food hoarding. Well, what do you think people - especially 21st century Americans who are used to getting whatever they want whenever they want it, and some of whom take the "screw everyone else; I'm getting mine, no matter what the cost" attitude - will do in the face of "rationing"?

They'll dream up ways around it. (Even in "real" rationing they did - James Beard once said something along the lines of "Everyone knew someone who would sell rationed foods 'under the table.' It was considered chic - somewhat like circumventing Prohibition.")

(I admit some of my admiration for the man died when I read that. Say what you will about WWII food rationing, but people who willfully cheat it - because they can, because it's chic - there's something a little disgusting about that.)

Anyway - by playing up the story, by going with the usual news-instinct to make it sound as bad as possible - it's going to freak people out and possibly make problems worse.

(You want REAL problems? Try being a poor Malaysian who actually depends on rice as a staple and has no other sources for it. Apparently Malaysia was confronting Thailand the other day because Thailand promised to sell them a certain amount of rice and now have reneged.)

And of course, some people run with this - on one blog I read that linked to one of the news stories, there were looming conspiracy concerns. And comments about how "Wal-mart isn't restocking regularly any more; the shelves look kind of bare now." And there are other, agreeing comments: yes, yes, one of the employees agreed, it's because they're not sending as many trucks full of food now in order to save money on diesel. (So: "OH NOES eeeeeeviiiilll Wal-mart is going to starve us instead of making us come in and buy unhealthy food and cheap crap made in China." I almost feel sorry for Wal-mart; they can't catch a break from the haters.)

So, I figured I'd take a look this morning. (I had to buy groceries anyway). I headed out to the local Wal-mart at 6:30 this morning (yes, I get up at the buttcrack of dawn even on the weekends; 6:30 is actually sleeping late for me).

Shelves pretty full.

Even the rice shelves - there were a couple empty slots (I think the brown rice was sold out, but as far as I'm concerned, no great loss there. Brown rice is one of those things that healthists push and which I think tastes like ass). But there was plenty rice. And plenty beans. And plenty meat in the meat case (I don't buy my meat at wal-mart, though, there's a small regional dairy-store chain that sells far better quality meat at competitive prices). Plenty of milk, yogurt, eggs, butter, produce...all the stuff I needed. Nothing seemed to be sold out. And there were few people there at 6:30 am but it didn't seem like any of them were girding up for Food Distribution Armageddon.

Now, don't get me wrong: it's pretty smart to have a certain amount of emergency food on hand. I keep enough canned beans and tomatoes and other stuff I could eat (even if I had no way of heating it up - canned tomatoes may not taste GREAT at room temperature but they are edible). But I don't see any evidence here of a mass freak-out. Which is good. I'd hate to have to go all Zombie Apocalypse on some guy grabbing all the cans of black beans off the shelf because he "needs" them all.


And there are other people using this as another stick to beat Bush with. (heh. Stick. Bush.) One of the newspaper-bloggers said something along the lines of "This coming few months will be BAD but when we get someone new in the White House, they will fix it."

(Actually? The resident of the White House making a move to "fix" temporary shortages of one particular type of food? That scares me more than the shortages do)

But I predict we will hear more "food insecurity" stories over the summer, designed to make people worry, make people begin to say things like "The government should DO something to ensure we are all fed!" And I bed Obama and Clinton and even McCain will come out with grand statements of what they are going to do to ensure "food security"

(and I will eat a bag of that much-hated-by-me brown rice if one of them actually comes up with a phrase along the lines of "a pound of rice in every pot.")


Just you wait.