Word: metrication
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...Global Exposure The world still grows plenty of rice, more than 420 million metric tons last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But prices are spiking for several reasons: rising long-term demand in countries such as China and India, where millions of increasingly prosperous people are eating more; short-term supply shocks thanks to unusually cold weather and pest infestation in Vietnam, the world's second largest supplier of rice; and the diversion of a huge chunk of America's corn crop to ethanol production, which has boosted demand for other staples, including rice...
...even more complicated. Take India, for example, where rice prices are rising fast, contributing to 7% inflation last month, the highest in more than three years. The country is not suffering from a classic case of tight supplies. National rice production this year should hit 94 million metric tons, up more than 2 million metric tons from last year and more than 20 million metric tons from 2003's crop, which was devastated by a bad monsoon. Nor have shortages hit a government-run rice-distribution program that helps feed India's poor. That program bought 20.6 million metric tons...
...Food Chain Of course, higher global prices hurt the poor most, and the impact is particularly heavy in countries such as Bangladesh and the Philippines, which are dependent on imported rice to feed their large populations. A November cyclone in Bangladesh ravaged the fall crop, destroying some 800,000 metric tons of rice and forcing the country to import an extra 2.4 million metric tons from India simply to stave off famine. In Vietnam, bad weather and pest outbreaks hurt harvests. In the Philippines, where some 68 million people live on less than $2 a day, the government recently urged...
...FOOD $360 Price per metric ton of rice in late 2007 $760 Price on March 27. Spiking prices have raised fears across Asia and Africa of food shortages, hoarding and social unrest...
...could drive Clinton from the race soon. A $20 million month, though less than Obama's total, would under any other circumstances be a respectable total for a political fund-raising operation. But it would nonetheless leave Clinton a step or two behind Obama in a another vital political metric: financial strength. A lingering debt, meanwhile, would mean that Clinton could face a longer-term consequence of an extended campaign...