Immigrants worried about cost stock up on rice

Kuo-Chen Yen, manager of New A & N Food Market Inc., hasn't had trouble getting rice, just keeping it on the store's shelves. It usually takes him two weeks to sell 10,000 bags of rice. Now it only takes a week.

Until rice prices flatten out, Yen said he is forced to pass the cost increase on to consumers.

"I'm just paying more to get the rice," he said.

Peter Wong, who's in charge of the rice at Hong Kong Super Market in Queens, said he's seen his sales increase by 40 percent. But he's not selling out. Like Yen and Suen, Wong had plenty of rice to go around.

Wong didn't think there was a risk that his customers would stop buying jasmine rice, even as it topped $19 for a 25-pound bag.

"The Chinese eat rice," he said with a smile. "They have no choice."

All types of rice grown in the United States have seen price increases as they fill in demand usually met by their competitors abroad. California farmers, for example, will be selling more to Turkey, now that Egypt, which also produces medium-grain rice, pulled out of the export market.

Long grain rice grown in the Southern U.S. went from $397 per ton in April 2007 to $794 a year later. The medium-grain rice grown in California went from $551 per ton to $750 per ton in the same period.

But it's the imported rices that don't grow in the U.S. — the basmati or jasmine preferred by Southeast Asians, Indians, Filipinos and many Chinese — that are in the greatest demand and going for the highest prices.

In early April, Thai jasmine was selling for $1,000 a ton, and basmati for $2,000 a ton. That translated into 50-pound bags selling for between $36 and $40, which led some buyers to take home all the rice their local stores carried and created spot shortages in certain immigrant neighborhoods.

"People are so worried, everything is going up so much. It's so crazy," said Mahinder Parmar, owner of Milan, a Berkeley store selling everything from Indian music to sweets, instruments and spices.

Walking over to a wall lined with bags of rice, many of them holding varieties grown only in India, he punches a bag of Surti Kolam. It's had been marked up from $12.99 to $21.99.

"People hear what's going on, they want to come and buy 2 bags, not one," he said. "We'll sell what's in stock, and after that we don't know."

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