Won't export bans in significant exporters cause a problem for their agricultural industry? Crops rotting, farms laid up and experienced people leaving the business? I hope there are legitimate domestic supply concerns, because rushing into such a policy could be a spectacular own goal.

A very good point. Let's hope no-one with the power to enforce their ban actually tries.

Why? The sooner we start to eat only locally grown food, the better. Global food market is absolute lunacy.

Because there will be a few more Zimbabwes where once there were countries that were self-sufficient in food. It could be difficult to implement an export ban that does not then produce effects far beyond its planned extent.

DENILIQUIN, Australia — Lindsay Renwick, the mayor of this dusty southern Australian town, remembers the constant whir of the rice mill. “It was our little heartbeat out there, tickety-tick-tickety,” he said, imitating the giant fans that dried the rice, “and now it has stopped.”
The Deniliquin mill, the largest rice mill in the Southern Hemisphere, once processed enough grain to meet the needs of 20 million people around the world. But six long years of drought have taken a toll, reducing Australia’s rice crop by 98 percent and leading to the mothballing of the mill last December.

Australia, the world's sixth-largest wheat exporter, is poised to sow what could be a record crop this year, according to GrainCorp Ltd.

``Everyone is ready for it,'' Mark Irwin, the Sydney-based company's chief executive officer, said today in a telephone interview. ``It's very much set up for it, it's going to be a very strong harvest if we get some rain in the next month or so, and follow-up rain later in the harvest.''

Grain farmers in Australia rely on rain starting at the end of this month to sow winter crops including wheat, barley and canola. Some grain growers in central Queensland state have begun planting wheat and summer rains in New South Wales state have been ``exceptional,'' Irwin said.

Soybean and corn output in Brazil will rise more than previously forecast this year, topping the records reached in 2007, the Agriculture Ministry said.

Farmers in Brazil, the world's second-biggest soybean producer, will harvest 59.99 million metric tons of the oilseed, up from a March estimate of 59.6 million tons, the ministry's crop forecasting agency, known as Conab, said today. Brazil's corn crop, the world's third biggest, will reach 56.2 million tons, up from a previous estimate of 55.3 million tons.

Surging soybean and corn prices led growers to increase planting and gave farmers more income to spend on improving the soil and fighting weeds and bugs. Yields also were boosted by above-average rainfall in the months before the harvest in the Center-West, which accounts for half of Brazil's soybean output.

Austraila drought and rice production

I think that we can say that the food problem is not just one problem but the convergence of many smaller supply issues at the same time. The question occurs, however, what will happen if there is one big problem on top of a system strained by many smaller ones?