Business Week quotes CGD visiting fellow Tom Slayton and CGD non-resident fellow Peter Timmer on Japanese rice stocks.
From the article:
"To tap its import reserves, Tokyo had to get Washington's imprimatur. That might not have happened if not for Tom Slayton, a former U.S. agriculture official, and Peter Timmer, a visiting Stanford University professor, who drew attention to Japan's reserves in a report on the Center for Global Development's (CGD) Web site in early May. Releasing the rice, they wrote, 'would bring prices down immediately, averting hunger, malnutrition and increased mortality among poor people in Asia'"
Even so, giving Japan the green light wasn't an easy decision for Washington. High rice prices had brought American farmers an unexpected windfall. What's more, the U.S. had a more pressing matter to attend to, the $300 billion farm bill working its way through Congress. But the CGD paper circulated in Washington. Two Congressional committees and a Washington Post editorial referred to the paper, and U.S. trade officials were soon reaching out to the Japanese.
Only a Short-Term Fix
Temporarily using Japan's stockpile as food aid is a stopgap measure, not a solution, says Slayton. That's because food aid has its limits. The World Food Program shipped an average of 461,000 tons of rice annually as aid from 2002 to 2006. That would feed just 2.5 million people in Cambodia or Bangladesh, a fraction of the estimated 1.6 billion people who live on less than $1 a day, Slayton says."