 Yes, our gentlemen here are in France, second row, France, this row. Please take your where you're from and your question. Hi, my name is Ben Lanz. I'm a journalist for the Financial Times. I just want to ask, over the next year, what do you mean impact to high prices for other grains like corn and wheat is likely to be for rice? Because during the last few prices, there's other grains sold by the first price of the last to go. Do you think that may happen again at the moment given the price of grain and other grains? I'm pretty sure that you will have some impact because other grain and particularly oil prices have moved up to 80-some dollars. But the main thing is the QE from the United States and other wealthy nations that create all of these imbalances. When you print the money with the QE system, the spill holder of liquidity will come to other developing nations. And all of this means you will have high oil prices, you will have high rice prices, high real estate prices. Theoretically, that's the way it is. And I'm pretty sure that this could create high prices for rice because of the QE, which normally we do not relate. Most of the rice trade people don't understand what QE is. But today, to stay in business, you have to understand what QE is and what QE is doing to your right business. I have a question with Dr. Mopati. If I understand you correctly from your presentation, you are projecting the retail rice price in China to a decrease by 60%, something like that, by 2035. Can you help me understand some of the key assumptions you used behind this conclusion? I understand you have two key assumptions. One is the consumption of rice with a decrease with rising income. The other one is the yield will continue to improve. My question is, is there any other key assumptions you used? I think you misunderstood the graph I had. I was looking at some assumptions and they're getting eery rice research. Eery rice research is geared towards improving the productivity. We're assuming if eery rice research contributes 15 kg of paddy a year in all Asian countries, a simple assumption. And over the next 25 years, if that continues by 2035, what would be the impact on retail prices with eery research but without eery research? I'm not talking about the levels. The level of rice prices might be much higher. I don't know. But what I'm saying is if eery contributes 15 kg every year, eery rice research to the yield of Asian rice income, yield. By 2035, the Chinese retail prices would be 15%, 16% lower than what would have happened without eery rice research. So it is mostly talking about the impact of the research on yield and the prices and the poverty and the ekkiness and the environmental impact. In the baseline, we have assumed the ekkiness is going down in China. The per capita consumption is going down. So these are the rice retail prices in the baseline level I don't remember, but it's probably not increasing that much in China. But the 16% I saw just the impact of rice research on prices and poverty and... The rice center. I'd like to congratulate all speakers for a very interesting presentation. I had a comment on a graph shown by Sam, a land team, where you showed many yields in Asia and Africa. I think you should be aware that you can't really compare those situations because in Africa, most rice is grown in an upland conditions. In fact, in Asia, it's like 60% irrigated. If you would compare an irrigated crop in Africa, for example, in the Sahel in Mali, we're saying with an irrigated crop in Thailand, I think the average would be even higher than in Thailand. We're talking about 60% per hectare in San Diego and Mali right now. Pensions are much higher because of high soil irrigation, root soils, and irrigation. So we have to be careful that you compare apples and apples. I agree. I don't think I meant to compare Asia and Africa. What I was telling you is that within Asia and within Africa, there is a gap there which can be closed. Thank you. I'll sit to your panelists. My name is Mark Hillholtz. I'm from South Africa. I'm here as an emerging investor in the rice industry in Africa. My question relates more to my colleague from Thailand, who made a statement saying that Thailand's future in terms of remaining as the major exporter is probably going to diminish over the next two to three decades. From him and from our panelists, maybe some indication of what role Africa would begin to play in terms of meeting other nations on demand, but also becoming a major role play in terms of supplying Asia and South East Asia in particular in the future. What he said is going through in Africa, in Thailand, that the prominence might decline over time, but you need to go back and look at what Abu was here before that what he said about Africa in terms of African rice deeds and what will happen if Africa not producing anything. I agree with that. If Africa not producing anything, I don't think Asia and the country have the ability to completely feed the African population. And I made a comment in my presentation that African production growth has accelerated in the last eight to ten years quite a bit. You can see that their import is kind of stagnant. I believe that somewhere behind the line when all the Asian countries are subsidizing rice production, and that has in fact in terms of what had happened in African production growth. And we see that the last eight to ten years with the rice prices increased, we see that African farmers responding to that and producing rice based on what the market price is. So for me, African can definitely play a role. Also, I would like to point out one more thing I've been telling all over that if we really want to stabilize the rice market, we need to have rice exporters beyond Asia where rice is not a stable commodity, just like all the soybean, we have countries who are producing for the sake of exports so that you know that this particular country is producing and they will respond to the market signal. If the price goes up, they will really stop. The stock will increase the global market. If we want any sort of stabilizers in the global market, rice needs to be produced in many African countries. Who will be producing for the sake of exports? And rice needs to be produced in many South American countries. Who will be producing for the sake of exports? I don't think just producing and exporting by Asian countries is going to keep the market stable in the future. Like I said, the Thai farmers have high margin but poor because they don't have enough land. Why don't you invite them to go to Africa? You know, they would be so happy because then the economy of scale would be there. The land is plenty in Africa. The water is plenty. And it would do wonderful thing for the farmers themselves and also the Thai government will feel relieved and you will benefit in a win-win situation. My name is Sompong Isaryan. I'm from Thailand. I think from the fraud, they are taking to account the aging of the farmers in Asian context because even in Thailand or in some other countries right now, the average age of the farmers is increasing. And there are also some that leave the confirming use that they couldn't do. Even you can use mechanization but the return from farming is still very low compared to planting some other crops instead. And also I think because the dynamics at the same of the market, I think the reality of the other crops is coming to stronger than to bring this farmer to still keeping the area to grow rice. You have to kind of write it down. I think the number of farmers declining and also the planting area declining. Tom Shuler with Bear Crop Science in the US. Why I do believe that that's something that I would have when I think the world goes up in quantity prices. And I also wanted to ask you just a question about the quantity of these in the United States. Do you feel is your comment using based on the hedge fund relationship you saw back in 2008 where the hedge fund positions were private pools of commodities and as oil prices ran up they had to balance their hedge funds to bring more cultural commodities into the hedge funds and that's what drove commodity prices? Can I handle this one? Very interesting one. Definitely not QE then 07 or 08. It's politics. Now you remember that in the year we announced the closing of right export sometime in 07 and then it followed by China, followed by Vietnam. Now this is on the supply side and Egypt also and then other countries I don't remember all. But then on the importing side Philippines and the blue sky would pay any price above the market. You see you got two seller and buyer Seller say I don't want to sell and close my door and buyer say ah tell me whatever you Vietnam sell to me any price. You see you got this unusual thing going on all decision made by politicians that's why right prices went up in 07 or 08. Now the quantity the supply of right was not in shortage it was normal. Everything was normal in 07 or 08. What was abnormal is this politician decision both in export that country and import that country. Now how did India react to that? Because of wheat, because of corn, because of oil prices all of those seem to be inching up a lot but no matter what they did not go in terms of 300 percent, 3 times right prices went from 300 to 1000. Now wheat price probably went up maybe 60, 70 percent or so corn more or less in the same range. It doesn't exceed in terms of many times. Whenever any commodity went up in prices in 4 or 5 months 3 times higher it's absolutely nonsense, it's something wrong and that's what happened in 07 or 08. Has nothing to do with chewy then probably if there was no chewy. I thought normally if you look at the commodity index fund rice is not one of the commodity included in the index fund. I thought most of the index funds except very small ones are rice very small sales. So in 2007 or 2008 was the rice was impacted by the speculative behavior by the financial sector? Let me respond a bit to that. I think that there was some that and there's in fact I think some of the speculative and hedge funds going into the rice futures currently which is what's pushing that relative let's say to the cash raw price price in the U.S. we're seeing a huge margin actually they're developing. But on the other hand I think okay yes a dollar is going to be appreciated we know that we can push some pressure here on all commodity prices. But I think that again if you look at the market fund mills this year we have regular world production. We have increases or at least flat level in terms of stocks. So I think it's important that this story be reported as saying that yes there's going to be some push on the depreciation of the dollar by the QE2 but that the market fundamentals do not augur for the kind of price fight that we see.