I was talking to a family member last night who works at WalMart and said the Sam's Club side of the business is restricting customers to four bags of rice each. Sometimes I think when businesses do that it creates more of a shortage faster because of panic buying than would have occurred normally. I'm lucky if I use a medium sized bag of rice in a year and yet was thinking " hmmm, maybe I should go buy some just in case...".

It's still cheap at the farmers market where I live. Depending on how much rice you actually eat, this could/could not be a problem. Costco is doing this because of restaurants not households.

I am indeed. CostCo out where I live is regulating the sale of rice. I heard things were really terrible in Vietnam this season. Terrific, just what our economy needed. I've already heard stories of local Chinese and Asian fast-food joints and restaurants hoarding rice like crazy. A few years ago I bought a 12-pound bag of rice for $8.99. I'm almost afraid to know what it is now.

I'm suddenly hearing a lot of news stories about the big stores, like Costco, restricting the amount of rice people can buy. And the prices are going up. This makes a problem for people who run small food carts -- we have a lot of those where they serve bentos which all have rice. Are you seeing this where you are?