The rice harvest for the world’s largest rice exporter, Thailand, is shriveling due to water shortages. USDA forecasts a crop of 10 million tonnes for 2015/16, down 15 percent from last season. The country is coping with the second year of below-normal rainfall, “which has the potential to cripple its agricultural sector and slow its economy,” says the monthly World Agricultural Production report. The government has banned irrigation for rice grown during the current winter dry season. Farmers usually plant 2 million hectares of rice for the dry season. USDA forecasts that plantings will fall by 50 percent this year. “Dry season rice production is forecast at the lowest level in the past 50 years,” it says.
Thailand provides more than one-fifth of the rice in the world market. The bulk of the staple grain is consumed where it is grown. As a result, less than a tenth of the global rice crop is sold on the international market. The United States, while a small producer, ranks fifth in the world as an exporter.