rice

" Rice is the second largest produced cereal in the world. At the beginning of the 1990s, annual production was around 350 million tons and by the end of the century it had reached 410 million tons. World production totaled 395 million tons of milled rice in 2003, compared with 387 million tons in 2002. This reduction since the end of the previous millemium is explained by the strong pressure put on land and water resources, which led to a decrease of seeded areas in some Western and Eastern Asian countries. International rice trade is estimated between 25 and 27 million tons per year, which corresponds to only 5-6 percent of world production. It makes the international rice market one of the smallest in the world compared to other grain markets such as wheat (113 million tons) and corn (80 million tons). China's rice exports soared 69.1 percent year-on-year in the first ten month to 968,000 tons due to recovering grain output after years of stagnancy and sluggish growth. The value of the rice exports in the period reached 330 million U.S. dollars, up 71.7 percent year-on-year. China stopped rice export in March of 2004 due to grain output decline in the previous four years and resumed it in the next April. Affected by the policy, China's rice exports dropped 65.3 percent and 24.5 percent respectively in 2004 and 2005 to 910,000 tons and 690,000 tons."