The global trade in rice lurched to the brink of a 1970s-style “oil shock” today as prices surged 2.3 per cent to a new high and speculation mounted that Thailand, Asia’s predominant “rice superpower”, may join other regional producers in curbing exports.

The sudden spike in rice prices is a core part of a trend sweeping across the world, prompting governments to make radical changes to their calculations about how populations can be fed.

The World Food Programme said this week that the poor would be hardest hit by rampant food price inflation, and Asia in particular could soon confront the threat of “a silent famine”.

The July futures price for rice on the Chicago Board of Trade touched a record high of $24.745 per 100 pounds.

With the price of rice now more than twice what it was this time last year, several Asian governments have taken the radical step of holding back supplies — a measure that has indirectly triggered rioting and other unrest in countries that are net importers of rice and other staples.

Vietnam, India and China have recently curbed their rice exports in an attempt to ease rising inflationary pressures at home and to quell mounting political unrest as family budgets are stretched to their limits and panic-buying empties the shelves of food stores.

Thailand, which produces nearly twice as much rice as its nearest rival, India, has so far resisted taking that step.

Samak Sundavavej, the controversial Thai Prime Minister — himself a television chef — said yesterday that his Government would do nothing to jeopardise its reputation as “the kitchen of the world”.

But that position is under increasing strain, political analysts say, and should it falter would create the grain equivalent of the sort of oil supply crises that blighted economies in the 1970s.

James Adams, vice-president of the World Bank’s East Asia and Pacific Department, told reporters that export limits by such a key player as Thailand “would be very much like Saudi Arabia reducing oil exports”.

As further evidence of the growing unease in Thailand, an official from the country’s Agriculture Ministry said today that Thai farmers would be harvesting an extremely rare third rice crop in two months' time.

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