Rice crisis: PM’s call to President of Vietnam to ensure rice supply

Prime Minister Scott Morrison was forced to call the President of Vietnam earlier this year as a rice shortage threatens to deplete supply at Christmas lunch this year.

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Australia is facing a “rice crisis” and is expected to run out of the home grown grain before Christmas, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.

The drought and bungled water allocations has seen production drop by more than 80 per cent and forced SunRice to slash more than a third of its 600-strong workforce in the state’s Riverina region.

It comes as Prime Minister Scott Morrison had to call the president of Vietnam at the height of COVID-19 panic buying earlier this year, to ensure rice from an Australian owned factory would still be allowed through the country’s closed borders.

“We are going to run out of Australian rice by Christmas,” SunRice chief executive Rob Gordon said.

“Our supply chains including Vietnam are a hedge against Australian shortages so we will still have rice products on the shelves but it will not be Australian rice. Will people care? I think they should,” he said.

Hayley Parslow from SunRice. Australia is facing a rice crisis and will run out of home grown rice before Christmas. Picture: Vince Bucello

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“The frustrating thing is that we are doing exactly what Australian companies should be doing — making Australian grown rice into branded products and then exporting that around the world,” Mr Gordon said.

“This is at a time when governments are saying regional jobs will lead the recovery from COVID.”

Rice growers say it is not just the drought but the management of water allocations that is to blame.

Rice grower Rob Massina with his wife Ainsley and children Anna (in pink), Harvey (green) and Camilla (purple). Picture: Supplied

Rice Growers Association president Rob Massina said: “We need the state and ­federal environmental water holders to raise their game and manage water as ­efficiently as we do on our farms.”

“As farmers we spend millions of dollars on our farms putting in state of the art equipment to make sure we use as little water as possible.”

Australian farmers already use 50 per cent less water than anyone else in the world to grow rice.

“When the state and federal water holders are not working efficiently the brunt of those inefficiencies are worn by the irrigators,” Mr Massina said.

But that does not mean farmers were opposed to water being released into the environment under the Murray Darling Basin plan.

“Water was required to be put back into healthy river systems,” Mr Massina said.

“But what the right numbers are for the environment and for irrigators is still open to debate.”

NSW Water Minister Melinda Pavey says the rice crisis is the fault of other states. Picture: Jonathan Ng

NSW Water Minister Melinda Pavey said Australia was now facing a “rice crisis” that was caused by mismanagement in other states.

“Our rice industry, 98 per cent of which is grown in southern NSW, is at risk of collapse with the last two years of zero water allocations,” Ms Pavey said.

“While NSW was suffering through the worst drought on record, and our communities were living on zero general security allocations, South Australia was running the Lower Lakes at a minor flood level and released over 600,000 megalitres out over the barrages into the Southern Ocean.

“NSW has done all the heavy lifting by returning water to the environment. NSW has set the benchmark for compliance policy and it is well overdue for other states to catch up.”

Hayley Parslow says the Rivierina is feeling the impact of the rice crisis the hardest. Picture: Vince Bucello

But it is in the heart of the NSW Riverina, where jobs are being lost, that the impact of those water management failures are being felt.

Leeton’s SunRice operations manager Hayley Parslow said she and her husband — and their three children — “were all in this for the long game”, adding: “Nobody reasonably expects businesses that rely on agriculture to be consistently smooth sailing and we have greater resilience than most to roll with the environmental punches that mother nature blows. However, when the ups and downs are so long and are impacted by somewhat controllable measures, it’s very demoralising.”

Originally published as Rice crisis: PM’s call to President of Vietnam to ensure rice supply