This what hikes the price. It may be easier for me say as I am not a rice eater but Consumer should not pay that much, just for short while, and prices will start to fall…soon!

I have become more conscious about our rice consumption. Though I am still surprised that my Indian grocery here is Houston has not raised its price dramatically on sona masoori($8.00 for a 10lb bag).
I have been following commentary on the food crisis. I agree with many commentators who say that the drive to produce biofuels and subsidies in this regard are encouraging farmers to use more arable land towards satisfying the “energy” hunger. I think among many other things that may help the current situation efforts to use by-products of food crops waste and algae for producing biofuels might help in redirecting the resources at hand back to food production.
The most troubling fact is that the food crisis is like a “silent tsunami”, as the director of the WFP put it. There was an interesting cover story about how to solve the food crisis on the economist http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11050146
We feel the pinch during …but in developing nations many go hungry…but this is not receiving sufficient attention.

Have you ever tried your hand at this game?

http://www.freerice.com/index.php

One can donate rice by just playing vocabulary games.

Thanks again for the interesting discussion you have brought about by raising this issue.
Best,
Akhila

There is a local variety of Basmati grown in Texas called Texmati. You may want to look for this in your local stores. I have seen it in a few stores. Trader Joes also sells pre-cooked Basmati in the freezer section. Hope this info helps.

Very true that we are facing this situation..We stay in Groton and there is only one Indian Store…when we first heard the news that he is incresing the price of rice,we thought it must be monopoly….But then later we came to knw the real fact….Right now the price for a 20lb Sona Masuri is $28…At this rate I am really wondering what is the next alternate to rice!!!!!

I stay in San Jose, Sona Masoori costs 16.99 here(@ Kamal Spices). The guy there told me that there is no supply of rice and the prices might go up again. He also said that the price of lentils (toor dal, chana dal, urid dal) MIGHT also go up.

Let me tell you this.. I paid $24.99 for a 20 lb bag of sona masoori rice in local patel Brothers. Earlier it used to be $11.99

Oh my god what are we going to eat in future if the prices keep growing like gas prices.

Wheat Flour prices were also raised.

I hope you are doing well. Its been an year since I stopped blogging, but I visit your blog once in a while. It’s one of my favorites

I too had the same question in mind about the rice price rise. From all the comments above, I can understand that may be there is a shortage in production, may be it is hype, may be it is something else. But what I do not understand is, a $12.99 sticker on a 10lb brown basmati rice bag suddenly change to $14.99 the next day. The shop would have brought that way before the crisis started, so how does the shortage the store? The change in price of new stock is justified, but somehow rising the price of existing stock seems so selfish. I don’t know if that’s how economy works or businesses do, but it doesn’t seem right to me at a first glance.