As rice futures surpass $25 in overnight trade, a chain of events has been unfolding around the world that that paints an ominous picture for consumers and huge opportunities for commodity traders.

Rice is one of the world’s top food staples and as supplies have tightened, a “get it now or its too late” mentality has set in. Riots have taken place in many countries, as citizens cannot afford to pay 100 to 200 percent higher prices for rice. Even worse, many countries are curtailing or eliminating exports of rice, which leads to even less supplies on the world market. Countries that rely on importing rice as feeling the most pain.

The U.S. is not running a shortage of rice as we are a major exporter, but that could change soon as a hoarding mentality could take a lot of supplies off the market in a short period of time. Sam’s Club has limited the purchases of rice by customers, because some greedy individuals want to accumulate supplies out of fear that one day there will be no more rice to buy.

The situation in the rice market could get worse as everyone tries to protect their supplies, which leads to less supplies to go around. You can use this situation as a blueprint for supply shocks in other commodities in the year’s ahead where prices can move exponentially higher. We could easily see the same situation with corn and soybeans this summer if extreme weather develops during the growing season and crop yields drop.