I had a whole other blog post planned for this weekend. But the events of the last 36 hours made me change my writing.

It’s been months since our warehouses held more than a few bags of rice for more than two or three days. As soon as we got rice, we’d mill it and ship it. Because we have supply contracts to fulfill, we need our supplies to be able to meet our obligations. Farmers sell us rice; we process and sell to clients. Since June, farmers had no rice to sell because it wasn’t harvest time. We’ve bought up all the stocks from other processors, and from the rare breed of lowland rice farmers like Cyril A, who harvest at regular intervals throughout the year. Things got so bad, we had to re-negotiate our supply contract for school feeding...we had no rice to supply.

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