How to profit from the world rice shortage but look like you're trying to do something good in 5 easy steps

1. Be Wal-Mart
2. Notice a worldwide food shortage
3. Announce that you'll now be limiting consumers to four times the amount of the product that they would ever normally buy
4. Let Panic buying and hoarding set in.
5. Sit back and let the money roll in.
This week in response to a global rice shortage driven by increasing prices, and low production, Wal-mart announced that it would be limiting people to four 10kg bags of rice per visit. Now I don't know what everyone else normally does but I have never in my life thought that I would need 40kg of rice in one shopping trip. Now if Wal-Mart was recording everybodies addresses and limiting people to 1 bag per month that would be some sort of limit. Still I bought 20 kg of rice in January and have yet to make a significant dent in the bag.
Despite the extremely high nature of the limit that they set, it has led commentators to spend hours talking about food rationing and panic buying despite the fact that there is none of this yet. This "limit" will lead to hoarding and panic buying in North America, driving the price up world wide and increasing the shortages in areas of the world that are already suffering. While shortages do exist in the developing world due to trade restrictions and higher prices it's hard to say that the pallets of rice I saw in Costco today really represent a shortage in North America. Though I have to admit stopping and thinking, "should I buy a few bags now just in case".


So Wal-Mart gets 0 Stars out of 5 for making a decision to create a potential for profit out of a crisis. And the Media gets 0 stars out of 5 for trying to raise their ratings by fanning the flames of crisis for their own selfish ends.