An undated stock photo of a market stall with piles of many varieties of Vietnamese rice in Ho Chi Minh city grocery. Vietnam is one of the largest exporters of quality rice, Asia’s most important staple food.Bicho_raro | Istock | Getty ImagesA perfect storm may be brewing in Asia.Rice prices surged to their highest in almost 12 years, after India’s rice export ban and adverse weather conditions dented production and supplies of Asia’s primary staple food, according to the UN’s food agency.”The price of global rice prices is particularly worrying,” Qingfeng Zhang, a senior director from the Asian Development Bank, told CNBC. “What seems to be clear is that food price volatility will continue in coming months.”Other than India, food inflation has been relatively tame in Asia so far this year.But a confluence of factors is stoking fears that shortage of rice supplies could mark a return to a broad increase in the prices of other food commodities in Asia. Among them: extreme climate from global warming, along with the onset of El Niño for the first time in seven years, Russia’s withdrawal from the Black Sea grai …
