But the worst is yet to come, says Duncan Macintosh, spokesman of the International Rice Research Institute in a media interview shared with us by a friend.

Macintosh said, "Our concern is for October and November. We’re very concerned that the rice production and supply situation in the Philippines may get worse in October and November."

He explained: "The Philippines has two croppings of rice a year. Right now is the first crop and they’re harvesting the first crop in May or late in April so right now the Philippines will get a lot of rice from domestic supply. In June they will plant the second crop and that will be harvested in September or early October. By the time you get to the end of October and November there’s no more crops, the harvest has been eaten and they have to wait for May the following year for extra rice. They cannot get from the international market, the domestic supply is exhausted, what will happen?

Macintosh said a lot will depend on the harvest in September or October. "The very key thing we need to watch is the second crop. The first crop is harvesting now, we have to watch two things: one, the hot season that’s coming now in Asia, in Southeast Asia the dry season as everybody knows it. Dry season before the monsoon sets. That’s in southeast Asia and India.

"If because of climate change the dry season is much longer than normal and the monsoon comes light, that’s a serious problem. That means the second crop will be affected.

"If we have a good monsoon then the second problem to watch out for is the typhoon season, that will come in October, September, October, November. (Typhoons) come through the Philippines, through Vietnam to Southern China as they do very often. That will have an impact on rice production.

"If they come up through the Bay of Bengal to Bangladesh to Eastern India that will also have an impact. So we have to watch the weather, watch the monsoon season. And watch for the dry season it will be a very dry dry season.

Macintosh gave a brief overview why we are where we are today. He said the situation started in 2004 when China went to the international market for their rice needs because of domestic production problems.

"So in 2004, two things started to happen, the price of rice internationally started to go up and you have to ask why. That’s because the international stockpile of rice in the world - every country has a stockpile of rice - that stockpile started to go down because China and other countries were buying from other countries.

"It’s simple economics, when you see your supply of product go down, the price goes up, supply goes down, you have to pay more to get that product, same way for rice. So our international stockpile is going down and the price is going up. This continued quietly in 2004 and 2005, 2006; then in 2007 that’s when things really took off and you started to see the price of rice and the price of wheat and the price of corn all going up because at that time after three years the stockpile of rice in the world was very small. We had eaten all the rice we had in the world.

"So now the international stockpile of rice is at the lowest point in 30 years. The last time we were like this was in the early 1970’s and the price of rice in the 70’s was also at $1,000 a ton. So now the question is, can we increase rice production in Asia to excess so we can start to increase the stockpile?

"There’s about enough rice in Asia now up to 30 days; before it was more than 2 months supply. Now we have to wait for the harvest to come to go into the market. Before, importing countries like the Philippines would buy from the international stockpile in the market and sell it straight to their market. Now there is no stockpile to buy from. Vietnam has stopped exporting, Thailand has stopped exporting, India has stopped exporting.

"If you’re looking to buy rice in the market right now, there is no rice to buy but it’s very important to realize this started three, four years ago and the main reason apart from the shrinking stockpile is we have been too complacent, forgetting about agriculture.

"Agriculture is food production. We must invest in agriculture, we must invest in research and science and infrastructure. In many countries in Asia, Philippines included, for example irrigation for rice production has been deteriorating. The quality is not as good because they have not invested. They did not build new dams for irrigation, they did not do maintenance. So we need to invest in these things, we have not done that for more than a decade so today we are paying the price of the lack of attention to agriculture.

"So that’s the issue of the story. Very simple."