Sustainability and the Rice Industry: Can the world recognise farmers, farm assets and value them correctly?

So rice prices are falling and the whole word talkes a collective breath of releif in anticipation of affordable food prices, perhaps some pressure off governments that genuinely started wondering if they would face political crisis as the poor (and populous) voter starved.

There is a lesson here...we should not leave our guard down. I hope that the world has realised just how easy it is for the world to move from seemingly normal situation to CRISIS.

I hope sincerely that the world does not back down from this "wake up" call. In fact falling prices for now allows us to focus on the issues on hand and more on the long term than simple survival.

We must remember just how easy it was for panic to set in when India, Egypt and Brazil banned rice exports to create what happened between October and June of 2008.

Research on improving yields, reducing reliance on water and perhaps event come up with a better formula that the current systems in place.

Farmers deserve more
Farmers are undervalued
Farm land is undervalued
Farm products deserve more respect

Just take an example...most of us as employees expect a pay increment or better earnings from year to year just to make up for inflation, rising costs...if not any other more ambitious objectives.

If you take equity markets since the 1900s....any fund manager will show you that they have always performed well over the long term
Farm products have been declining in real terms for decades and even the 2008 "boom" in prices looks only a blip when compared to the real value of commercial and residential property, eqyity markets or one of many other economic/industrial indicators

Fact is, rice, wheat or corn is adjusted up 5% since the 1900s, would not only be more expensive, but probably not seen as a "food crisis". Prices rose in 2008 by some 300% in some cases, and this was seen as unacceptable...as compared to a program that allows farmer incomes to go us (just like us), the example of 5% a year since the 1900s would actually be less painful and allow a lot of our food assets to be valued correctly.

Imagine if all the global wheat or rice assets were owned by only 2-3 companies (just like in the case of iron ore, coal or some minerals where a few giants control markets)...we would have paid the price long ago.

The farm community has long been overlooked as a service community that has less desire - THIS IS WRONG, even if it was due to ignorance and negligence.

I'm trying to put the numbers together so we can see the visuals, but the facts remain the same - we just have a massive opportunity to do something instead of pretending that 2008 was just a once-time situation.