THE PRICE OF RICE

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 28, 28 October 1919, Page 4

THE PRICE OF RICE

NOW BEING SOLI) RETAIL AT Bd. PER LB. The news published yesterdav that (ho American Government has prohibited the export of rice from the Philippines owing to the acute shortage in supplies will bo received sadly in llie.se parts, and wherever rice is regarded as one of the foods approximating to the essential. Before the war rice was. always in steady supply in Wellington at Mil. per lli. retail, and it has been sold at 3d. per lb., but the present-day price is Bd. per lb., and tho quality is not nearly as good as we were .accustomed to before (he war. A visitor from Tientsin .(Northern China), now visiting Wellington, states that rice is dear even where it is produced in apparently limitless quantities. In China rico is too dear to be regarded as staple food for the Chinese. There are meals capable of sustaining life that arc much cheaper than rice as an everyday food, and it has to he remembered that SO per cent, of (he Chinese were dreadfully poor, and could not afford to buy rice as a steady thing, though they might have it now and again as a luxury. "But," said the visitor, "you people out here don't: know what good first crop rice is. The rice we get in Tientsin—well, each grain is about ns large as the_ tiail of my little finger, and it; is as white as .snow, and looks beautiful when served up in the various forms. Even in Tientsin we pay equal to 3d. per lb. for it. The rice you get is third crop rice of a very poor quality. The Japanese rice is ver.v good. It is so eood that they export their own rice to other countries, and import, low-grade Chinese rice to feed the coolies, on. A field of rice is one of the prettiest sights imaginable. It is grown practically in water. The rice fields consist of miles of terraces, each of which is kept flooded with water, so that rice cannot be grown in a country unless thjjve is plenty of water and warm weather. When it conies tin the green of the rice shoots is the most wonderful colour imaginable, so brilliantly alive is the pigment of the stems."