The price of rice has reached record highs in recent months, moving from $327 a tonne a year ago to $1,000 a tonne last week. Yet there is no serious shortage of rice - global production and consumption are roughly in balance. Supply has been affected by floods in Bangladesh which forced it to buy more on the global markets than normal, and the cyclone in Burma will probably force it to do the same, but the UN's food and agriculture organisation says rice producers generally have not been not hit by large-scale climate shocks and supply and demand is not the main cause.