Rice shortage reaches Mountain View Costco?
In the recent weeks the rising costs of agricultural grain production has lead to shortages and riots in various parts of the world, including Indonesia, Vietnam, and other countries. Nonetheless, I was surprised to see this article today describing rice shortages in the US, including at the local Costco over in Mountain View:
At a Costco Warehouse in Mountain View, Calif., yesterday, shoppers grew frustrated and occasionally uttered expletives as they searched in vain for the large sacks of rice they usually buy.
“Where’s the rice?” an engineer from Palo Alto, Calif., Yajun Liu, said. “You should be able to buy something like rice. This is ridiculous.”
The bustling store in the heart of Silicon Valley usually sells four or five varieties of rice to a clientele largely of Asian immigrants, but only about half a pallet of Indian-grown Basmati rice was left in stock. A 20-pound bag was selling for $15.99.
I’ll have to take a look next time I’m over there. Fortunately we’re still pretty well stocked up with big sacks of rice from the Korean grocery store.
Update 4/24/2008 18:00 PDT - Some pictures of empty pallets and a sign at Costco
Tags: food, economy, rice, trends, silicon valley, globalization
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Yeah, this is pretty ridiculous, hope people don’t start to panic and act crazy. Like me. Heard that the Costco near Seattle is out of rice already. Starting to see some news on this on CNN (Glen Beck), and local Seattle news today. Just in case, I stocked up on 4 huge bags of rice and 2 bags of organic sweet brown rice @ H-mart last night. There was another guy buying over 50 sacks, I think he owned a Teriyaki shop or something. The manager there said “how did you know that the rice prices are going to jump up?”, I replied back, “prices may increase, but I’m just worried that there will be a shortage”. Today, I purchased a good amount of powdered milk to leave at grandparents and at home for my kids in case of an emergency (earth quake or whatever). I feel a little better now. Now, I need to get some King Arthur Flour from Trader Joe’s and I will be set.