New South Wales rice growers say there will be no locally grown rice on supermarket shelves in Australia by January.
This year was the second-lowest rice harvest on record in Australia and many farms did not grow a single grain. As an example for a local supplier, he grew 34 hectares of rice where we normally grow a couple of hundreds.
The majority of rice in Australia is grown in the Riverina region of southern NSW, in what is known as Australia's foodbowl. And farmers there blame one of Australia's worst droughts and low allocations of irrigation water for the record low yields.
Currently, around half the rice in Australian stores is imported but that will be at 100 per cent come January 2021.