For people who normally eat rice, 50 pounds is nothing. Throw in some growing boys to the mix and that 50 pounds goes very quickly.

Not all kinds of rice of in short supply. California-grown medium grain rice (which I eat) seems to be in its usual, plentiful supply. The price might be up a bit, but that's not particularly alarming since everything else has been going up, too. However, as anyone who eats rice knows, there's a big difference between eating plain old long grain vs basmati vs Jasmine vs medium grain rice, so simply switching varieties is not as easy an option as it might seem.

I was working in Japan more than ten years ago when they had a national shortage of their normal short grain rice. I forget if it was just bad weather for that year or something. Anyway, a lot of long grain rice from Thailand was imported, but the Japanese wouldn't touch the stuff (it tastes/smells and cooks different). The government had to order that all short grain inventory had to be blended with the imported rice, otherwise people would've gobbled up all the short grain rice in short order, and then had no rice left until the next rice harvest that they would want to buy/eat. Eek, can you imagine sushi with the wrong kind of rice? That's like only being able to eat donuts made of whole wheat flour!