Wall Street Journal says:

Load the Pantry

Food shortage leads to local retail changes
Chris Tye

CLEVELAND -- A worldwide food shortage is forcing American retailers to limit the amount of rice customers can buy.

Sam's Club is limiting customers to four bags per visit while some smaller ethnic stores are feeling a pinch of a different kind.

"Pretty much everything is going up, but nothing is going up like rice," grocery distributor Yung Tran, of Eastland Foods, said.

The price of rice has doubled, leaving some rice piles bare at Tink Holl market on Cleveland's west side. Prices are re-marked almost weekly for the bags of rice that do remain.

"Fifty pound bags of rice that were $17 last year are selling at $35 now," Tran said. "And we're expecting it to go up much higher."

This run on foods like rice, corn and wheat is due to wiped out harvests, a growing world population and a weakening dollar. As is often the case, the cost of shipping products is getting costlier too.

"I think some factors have come together in what I call the perfect storm," Josette Sheeran, of the World Food Program, said.

While it is tough for consumers here, it is brutal for consumers in places like Haiti. Recent videos and pictures of women preparing mud pies for consumption have highlighted the growing problem of world hunger.

As some in Cleveland stockpile their rice in fear of another price jump, 800 million people around the world go hungry in what some call the world's largest food shortage since World War II.