FSE visiting professor Peter Timmer calculates that up to 10 million people in Asian countries could die prematurely from the recent run-up in global rice prices. In an interview with the Center on Global Development, he described the spike in the cost of rice as "the most serious problem facing the world food economy since 1973-74, when a million people in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh alone died prematurely as a result of a rice crisis."

He pointed to World Bank president Robert Zoellick's statement that the rise in food prices risked pushing 100 million people back below the poverty line. "In my view, the situation is actually much worse than that," Timmer said. "Unless some way can be found to stop the explosive rise in food prices generally, and rice prices in particular, we will see sharply higher mortality.

"If current rice prices in world markets are actually transmitted into most Asian countries--and this is not yet a reality, but it becomes more likely every day the world price stays this high--then even conservative calculations suggest that upwards of 10 million people will die prematurely."