Following Costco’s lead, Walmart announced it is now rationing rice. Shoppers at Sam’s Club discount wholesale clubs will be limited to four bags of rice per customer. Wal-Mart “working with our suppliers to address this matter to ensure we are in stock, and we are asking for our members’ cooperation and patience.” It’s not as bad as it sounds, the bags are still 500 lbs each.
Wal-Mart Rations Rice, Warns of “Supply and Demand” Concerns [Fox Business News]
PREVIOUSLY: Costco: One Bag Of Rice Per Customer, Please
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“Just buy your rice at the Asian store” is all set to become the new “I always get my pizza at a mom and pop joint”
This may be just the beginning. This is what you get when you listen to the environmental wackos and burn grain instead of eating it or actually drilling for oil off shore or in alaska. Glenn Beck talks about this situation often lately. catch him on the radio.
@sir_eccles:
The baked beans and white bread wars rocked! I lived on 3p baked beans, white bread and irregular eggs in 4-dozen trays through a good chunk of college.
@chiieddy: Food is food. If you’re eating grain instead of rice, the price of rice is still going to go up. You either need to raise the supply of food or decrease demand, and only the former is really a possibility.
There is some irony in that only a few years ago, people were complaining that food prices were really low and that this was destroying African farmers. Be careful what you wish for!
@timmus: Calories in Rice-White – 1/2 Cup-Cooked – 133
@nikalseyn: Put a sock in it, dittomonkey. The reason we’re burning grain in our cars is because gas is pushing $4 and there are tax incentives for producing biofuels. As for drilling in ANWR, this is a problem that will not be solved by drilling more holes, and besides, there ain’t enough oil up there to compensate for screwing up the environment. The oil companies just want the oil to sell to China anyways.
India has recently reinstated the ban on all exports of certain types of rice (basmati, long grain, jasmine, etc). India, who is the largest exporter of rice products to the USA.
Now you see why Sam’s Club and Costco might be rationing their rice – their suppliers can’t get the cheap stuff from India like they have been doing.
@timmus: I think it may be a joke about the size of things you can buy in a bulk warehouse, like 5 gallon buckets of mayo, etc. But with all the sloppy editing lately, you never know …
@nikalseyn: Actually most of us smarter enviormental wackos are NOT in favor ethanol, because it is not an efficient use of technology. It uses huge amounts of energy to produce, is less efficient than the gasoline it replaces and it’s geographically not possible to grow enough corn to use ethanol to replace a significant amount of oil consumption.
Enviromental wackos want proven technology widely in use like solar and wind power. We want significant raises in fuel economy requirements for cars and trucks, our government supporting the Kyoto Treaty like most other major countries.
It’s actually conservative Republican and the corporations that bought and paid for our goverment that are responsible. Think Monsanto, Archer Daniels, etc. Our goverment subsidizes every gallon of ethanol. So the riots and mass starvation in other third world countries is actually underwritten by Bush and his gang of thugs.
Also, we had Republican legislators and the oil companies fight efforts to end billion dollar subsidies to the oil companies who have the largest recorded PROFITS in the history of the world.
Please crawl back under a rock and take Rush Limbaugh with you.
@sixninezero: I’m gonna plant a rice paddy!
@AMetamorphosis: Don’t you mean riceburg?
@Ben Popken:
LOL, touche’
@ChuckECheese: I grow tomatoes, corn and beans. But if you want to grow rice, good luck.
@unklegwar: Don’t eat white rice.
Brown is ever so much tastier, and full of B vitamins. And fiber.
(We eat rice a couple nights a week. I took a nutrition class and every nutrition assessment I did I came out sky-high on B vitamins from all that tasty, tasty rice. Like don’t-need-prenatal-vitamins-to-prevent-neural-tube-defects levels of B vitamins from my rice.)
One of my favorite lazy dinners is brown rice with shredded cheddar mixed in and soy sauce on top. Seriously, it’s good. Or brown rice cooked in chicken broth with broccoli thrown in the last 5 minutes, but that’s good-for-you lazy, not “rice equivalent of Mac-n-Cheese” lazy.
Brown Basmati FTW!
no rice for you
Damnit, now where in the hell will I pick up my 2k lbs of rice necessary for living??????? Arghhhhhh
In the 1940s, the auto industry got rail dismantled in big cities because, well, people should buy cars and help the economy and stuff. A bit higher density with efficient public transportation in more places would sure come in handy right now.
In the ’70s & ’80s, fruit and nut orchards in Sonoma County and elsewhere up and down the West Coast came down so “visionaries” could plant vinyards. (After that, it was farmland giving way to foreclosedivisions-I-mean-development.) “Oops!” again! Have you checked the price of almonds and walnuts at Costco, while wandering past that rice? I will say though that the Two Buck Chuck at Trader Joe’s is not bad this year.
America! Anywon who wants to tell us that we are using up and running out of stuff is a zero-sum-game spewing Commie! …although to be fair, war and pandemic will probably take care of some of the problem, later or sooner…
@unklegwar: I know it may be hard for you to imagine, but there are other cultures in the world, you know.
I’m actually tempted to drive the 20 miles out to Costco, in rush-hour traffic, to see these 500-pound rice bags! Wow! Rice weights almost nothing, how big a bag would you need to hold 500 pounds? It would strain the rickety flatbed carts, I’ll bet!
I finally heard a sensible explination for this on NPR this afternoon driving home. Walmart and Costco both make most of their money on memberships. Their margins on products are small. Since rice went up about double in recent months they decided to limit how many you can buy rather than jacking the price or taking a huge loss to sell it.
Anyway, that is Walmart/Sam’s Club’s excuse.
I’ve really enjoyed some of the funny comments here. But, all kidding aside, we are on the verge of worldwide food shortages that are going to get really nasty for everyone except the small percentage of super rich who are basically controlling the show.
We’ll hear all sorts of ‘reasonable’ explanations and it will, of course, always be somebody else’s fault. But, even if we say it can’t happen here or there, it can and is.
@bohemian: That doesn’t make sense, at least for the Costco customers. It’s like $30/yr, which isn’t enough to do much of anything with.
Maybe those that buy a membership then forget about it, or buy $20/year of stuff. But they’d be broke if that was their core demo.
This is total news to me. I might be mad and European but I thought everyone ate brown rice ! Surely you guys can’t have overlooked the cheapness / nutritional value ?
@Eyebrows McGee: Brown rice spoils in less than a year unless protected from air and stored cool. It’s not an excellent storage grain, which is only one reason many rice eating cultures prefer it white. For the best storage rice, purchase parboiled, aka converted (aka Uncle Ben’s) rice. Converted rice has a nutritional profile better than white, worse than brown, because parboiling causes vitamins to migrate into the grain. The precooking and drying process make the grain very hard and less palatable to insects. It can be stored for a few years with little loss in quality. And it cooks quickly.
Here’s my theory on why some groceries have cheaper rice than say the Asiatic markets. Many groceries do have current supplies purchased at a low price and/or purchasing contracts that permit them to get grain at a certain (lower) price. Other stores don’t have old cheaper inventory and/or the price contracts. When the supply or contract runs out, you must buy in the current market, and you get expensive rice. It won’t be long until everybody’s rice is more expensive.
@Trai_Dep: Me too. My guess is all those people that buy them and don’t use them often are pure profit.
@nikalseyn: Drilling ANWAR is a stupid idea.
ANWAR by being untapped is a strategic oil reserve that allows the US to have sufficient fuel for self defense even if over seas oil routes are cut.
It also allows us to weather the much more likely situation that in a future war oil producing countries will play both sides for profits.
Wasting Americas National resources so a corporation can make a few billion more or a politician can get a few percentage points qualifies as treason.
There are specific constitutional provisions that deal with such people.
@ChuckECheese: A 20-lb bag of brown rice doesn’t last more than 6 months in my house.
(And yes, all whole grains are far more prone to spoilage than refined grains.)
@Techguy1138: No, it doesn’t qualify as treason, unless you can specifically describe how it aids and abets a specific enemy. Honestly, that kind of rhetoric is the sort that got us into Iraq…
Anyways, yes, the current food situation is scary, but on the positive side, easily corrected, because the food is there – it’s just not going to the right places.
As long as they don’t take my beans I’m okay! Don’t eat rice a whole lot at my house, it’s okay now and then.
@Eyebrows McGee: 20 pounds?! You’re gonna starve. I assumed you were buying quarter tons at a time like everybody else. 20 lbs is utterly reasonable.
When there’s no more rice, I say mais qu’ils mangent du brioche.
@howie_in_az:
Sounds like a great time to walk out the store and back in again, this constituting another “visit”
@Erwos:
Substantially weakening the nations ability to act independently in a time of war would count as aid and comfort to an enemy.
Typically these type of crimes fall under much smaller penalties.
And no that is the opposite of the type of rhetoric that got us into Iraq. If tampering with intelligence evidence and falsely presenting facts qualified as a high crime or misdemeanor, as it should, we would not be there now.
People are to tolerant of those who would wreck the country for personal gain.
On a side there is plenty of food. It’s just that people can’t afford it. Foreign nationals depended on the US economy to continue onwards. It didn’t, now people are screwed. Zimbabwe is likely to never recover at this point.
This only affects most of the other nations of the world. Heck something like 10% of our rice goes straight into making our cheap American beer. We can almost live without rice. Corn is another thing though.
We are unique in that we run largely a corn economy. I just hope no one decides to ration corn products or we will be in severe trouble.
If we were all to eat locally then we would avoid a lot of these issues. My beef cost the same this year as it did last year because energy costs were largely the same and the beef only had to move a few miles from birth to my home.
I bought a 5 lb. bag of Niko Niko brand calrose rice,(cheap stuff) at WinCo today for almost 7 bucks. It has doubled in price over the last month. I eat a lot of rice but not so much as to not being able to afford it.
Let the Chicken Little rice hording and gold buying begin!