About That Rice Shortage of Last Week ...

I got a bit nervous when news stories starting coming out last week, asserting that large American retailers were imposing limits on the number of bags of rice that customers could buy ...

Not because I feared a food-shortage, especially, but because I was afraid of the impact of the spread of false stories about food availability.

The New York Sun led the "journalistic" charge, with a hyperbolically-titled article, "Food Rationing Confronts the Breadbasket of the World."

Um, no.

Unfortunately, this story was picked up in the major media and soon spread its way around the world, multiplying in urgency each time it was repeated, like some old-fashioned game of telephone.

Some facts in the story were true.

But important facts that would have helped readers extract the truth from the story were omitted.  The purchase limits, for example, only affected higher-priced imported specialty rices from Asia -- jasmine and basmati rice, for example -- that are popular among immigrant communities in the U.S.  And the restrictions were targeted at small businesses who buy rice in large quantities from places like Costco and then re-sell them, or prepare them for sale in restaurants.

Even then, customers were allowed to buy up to something like eighty freaking pounds of rice at a time.

Is the world's food supply stressed?

Yes.

Do prices of food staples continue to rise domestically?

Yes.

Are rising food prices globally a factor in potentially increasing political instability?

Yes.

Should you run out and hoard food?

Right now, all indicators point to, "No."

Looking at the rice situation in particular, CNN reported that domestic rice producers were "puzzled" by news stories last week about shortages.

They explained that this year's rice yields are expected to be above average.  And that the U.S. production capacity for rice far exceeds our ability to eat it.  Of U.S. production, we eat about half of the rice crop and send the other half abroad.  (This being said, the U.S. is a major producer of only short and medium-grain rice, not other speciality rices like jasmine and basmati.)

This doesn't mean that the stress on global food supplies isn't a story.

This is important.

But it's complicated.

And because it's both important and complicated, it's important that the reporting on global food problems is accurate and that we help each other filter out noise like the New York Sun article linked above.

For now, the U.S. has plenty of rice.

We got plenty of food.

It's weird:  We have plenty of hunger at the same time.

Our national problem with hunger has less to do with food scarcity and more to do with an increasingly inadequate distribution of the means of acquiring food.  Working people in America are financially broken-down and increasingly broke while all our money floats upstream to Wall St. banks and corporate CEOs and their hedge fund/private equity cronies.

We're currently adding about a million people per year to the food stamp rolls.

False stories about food rationing, food panics and hoarding won't solve problems with hunger in our country ...  They just make people anxious and possibly drive prices higher in the process.

Fight hunger by encouraging government to use its powers for social and economic justice.  Don't fight hunger with food panics and hoarding.

Anyway, I happen to be a pretty big eater of rice.  I know it's not exactly bursting with nutrients, but it makes a pretty good "starch" component of a meal and is an excellent "carrier" of all sorts of sauces, cooked vegetables, beans and what-not.

Moreover, it is extremely economical.

My favorite thing to make these days with rice is mujadara, the Levantine dish of rice and lentils cooked together and garnished with carmelized onions.

I make it like this:

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup white rice
• 3/4 cup lentils
• Abundant olive oil, salt
• Cumin, cinnamon to taste
• 1 onion

Instructions:

Heat a large saucepan of water to boiling and then add the rice and lentils.  Cover and simmer for twenty minutes.  Remove the saucepan from heat.  Drain the rice and lentils through a sieve and return to the saucepan.  Dress generously with olive oil, salt and with cumin and cinnamon to taste.

For the carmelized onions, you simply cook a sliced onion on low heat in a heavy skillet -- for example, cast iron -- for a half hour or so in scant oil until they turn a sweet, delicious brown color.  Strew these about the top of each portion of the mujadara when you serve.