As rice harvest begins, grain’s price soars

As the harvest of the wet season rice crop gets under way in many parts of the country, rice prices have started to increase, rice millers said yesterday. They said prices were now up about 15 percent compared to the same time last year, but the millers disagreed on what was driving this year's price increase. According to Ministry of Agriculture data released Tuesday, about 360,000 hectares of rice paddy has now been harvested, representing about 16 percent of the total planted annually, while 1.18 million tons of paddy had been reaped, which is about 18 percent of last year's harvest...