So food will cost more. But nobody remembers the rice shortage of 20 years ago; and this one will also be largely irrelevant, in the big scheme of things.
Probably because you are very far from the people actually dying from hunger?
There has always been enough food to feed the hungry, and there will continue to be enough with this rice shortage. That's not the reason people starve.
There's always enough food to feed the hungry... Until there isn't. What makes you so sure that there will continue to be enough food indefinitely?
Oh, at some point we'll be hit by a meteor, and anyone who manages to avoid death in the initial impact will surely starve to death. But then, a dip in rice production, no worse than one from twenty years prior, won't be the issue.
Didn't it cause revolutions and riots? I'm sure people who were barely or not at all affected don't remember and think it was irrelevant, but why would you think that was universal?
i feel as though these days prices fail to return back to normal after sharp spikes like they have in the past, anecdotally
Oh, they're never going back. We're all going to be less wealthy going forward. But it isn't because of a rice shortage.
Africa's population has nearly doubled since the year 2000. (819 million to 1.4 billion)