Academic

CHANGE: U.N. Food Agency Issues Warning on China Drought. China has been essentially self-suffic?

By Glenn Reynolds

CHANGE: U.N. Food Agency Issues Warning on China Drought.

China has been essentially self-sufficient in grain for decades, for national security reasons. Any move by China to import large quantities of food in response to the drought could drive international prices even higher than the record levels recently reached.

?China?s grain situation is critical to the rest of the world ? if they are forced to go out on the market to procure adequate supplies for their population, it could send huge shock waves through the world?s grain markets,? said Robert S. Zeigler, the director general of the International Rice Research Institute in Los Baños, in the Philippines.

Which would, likely enough, create more government instability around the world.

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on February 11, 2011 (boomark / email).