CHICAGO (Reuters) - With established trade trends in rice being blurred by tight global supplies that have sparked global food riots, U.S. exports are set to grow and enter more new markets.

A man sprays fertilizer onto a paddy field in Jiaosi, Ilan County, April 7, 2008. REUTERS/Nicky Loh

Panic buying of rice futures at the Chicago Board of Trade took prices to record highs on Thursday, which is expected to fuel already surging values for the staple in Asia.

The clampdown on shipments by major rice exporters in a bid to ensure food security and contain inflation over recent months has pushed new demand to the United States, the world’s fourth largest exporter of the grain.

“The global influx to the United States for rice is indicative of the underlying global supply problem,” said Thomas Wynn, director of market development for the U.S. Rice Producers Association.

“The rice trade has traditionally been hemispheric. The western hemisphere typically served the western hemisphere and the eastern hemisphere would circulate its rice in the east.

“We’ve definitely thrown the historic trends out the window,” he told Reuters.

He said there has been talk among some traders that Turkey, traditionally a buyer of medium-grain rice, may be interested in buying long-grain U.S. rice. Other traditional buyers of Asian-origin rice, like Iran and some east African nations, may be interested in U.S. supplies, he added.

“Looking at the potential new markets for U.S. rice, we should start to see those materialize in the next month or two when the supply shortage really begins to make itself apparent,” Wynn said.

Rice has become the latest food commodity to jump to historically high prices, joining wheat, corn and soybeans.

Surging prices and concerns about rice shortages have already sparked protests and riots around the globe and played a role last week in the collapse of the Haitian government.

Top consuming countries are hoarding supplies and several top exporters have banned exports to help stabilize domestic prices and stave off inflation. They include India, Vietnam, and Pakistan, three of the top five exporting nations last year.

Underscoring the lack of rice currently available for sale, a Bangladesh rice tender this week attracted no offers while a third consecutive Philippine rice tender failed to receive the full amount of bids.

GROWING DEMAND FOR U.S. RICE

U.S. rice is well positioned to fill that supply vacuum despite record-high prices, analysts said.

Rice planting in several states, including top producer Arkansas, is off to a slow start due to overly wet conditions, but several analysts said conditions were improving.

“Right now we’re in a kind of a perfect storm type of atmosphere. There’s just not a whole lot of rice available, especially in the Far East, and it’s clearly being reflected in price,” said analyst Jack Scoville of the Price Futures Group.

“There’s no reason to expect that our demand will slack off much. We will have rice for sale and we are cheaper right now than the Asians so we should continue to see more and more interest coming our way,” he said.

The United States shipped about half of its roughly 6 million tonne crop abroad in 2007, mostly to the Americas and the Caribbean.

But distant nontraditional buyers such as the Philippines and Turkey have bought large amounts of U.S. rice this marketing year. Cuba has also been a buyer as its market slowly opens to U.S. goods.

In its latest weekly export sales report, the U.S. Agriculture Department said net rice exports in the week ended April 10 totaled 176,000 tonnes, up 98 percent from the previous week and the highest in five months.