date:Oct 22, 2012
son reflects shrinking maize supplies in the United States that may curb the countrys maize stock-to-use ratio to an all-time low of 7.3%. By contrast, given the expectation of another bumper rice crop, global rice inventories at the close of seasons in 2013 are expected to surge by 6% (9.3 million tons) to a record of 165 million tons. This would lift the rice stock-to-use ratio by 1.6 percentage points to a comfortable 34.5%, or 10 percentage points higher than the 24.5% registered in 2006/07.