Correct me if I’m wrong but the Stupid Twins on ABC, George Stephanopolus and Charles Gibson, did not mention food riots, rising price of staples or drought in Australia, or ask the candidates anything vaguely related, did they?

The NY Times found space on the front page to bring us up to date:

The Deniliquin mill, [south east Australia] the largest rice mill in the Southern Hemisphere, once processed enough grain to meet the needs of 20 million people around the world. But six long years of drought have taken a toll, reducing Australia’s rice crop by 98 percent and leading to the mothballing of the mill last December.

Ten thousand miles separate the mill’s hushed rows of oversized silos and sheds — beige, gray and now empty — from the riotous streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, but a widening global crisis unites them.

The collapse of Australia’s rice production is one of several factors contributing to a doubling of rice prices in the last three months — increases that have led the world’s largest exporters to restrict exports severely, spurred panicked hoarding in Hong Kong and the Philippines, and set off violent protests in countries including Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Haiti, Indonesia, Italy, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, the Philippines, Thailand, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

Australian Drought

And in time-honored Marie Antoinette style, Australia is responding to the drought by replanting rice fields with wine-grapes. “Let them drink wine!”

The photo is from the Sidney Morning Herald web site, January, 2007, already despairing of the growing heat and drought.