Hard as the cyclone that roared through Myanmar on May 3 was on that nation, leaving as many as 100,000 dead and many more homeless, its impact on the world food supply may be even worse.

The storm sent a 12-foot surge across the Irrawaddy River delta, flooding farms, villages and large towns far inland, leaving corpses in its wake, before devastating the big city of Yangon (a.k.a. Rangoon), the former capital of what much of the world still calls Burma. Some have compared the disaster to the 2004 tsunami that ravaged stretches of the Indian Ocean coast.

The military government that has ruled the country since 1962 has kept relief workers from entering the country. It told the U.N. World Food Organization, eager to supply remote villages with food and water, that it would handle relief if the organization gave the kleptocratic regime the funds — a condition that the WFO refused.

The junta is much more concerned about fending off anything that might undermine its power than with dealing with its humanitarian crisis. After the tsunami struck, the U. S. Navy sent the carrier Abraham Lincoln to conduct relief efforts in the vast stricken region. Its helicopter fleet was the most effective means of supplying food and medical supplies.

Both the U.S. Navy and Britain’s Royal Navy have assets in the Indian Ocean that could be swiftly put to use if permission were forthcoming.

Last September the junta brutally suppressed an uprising by Buddhist priests, and it has kept the best-known leader of the democratic opposition, Aung San Soo-Kyi, under house arrest for most of the last 20 years. The country, one of the poorest, has watched as the junta has sold much of its abundant assets in timber, natural gas and other raw materials to neighboring China, with members of the junta and their families and allies pocketing much of the revenues.

Myanmar is also one of the largest exporters of rice. It had expected to put almost half a million metric tons on the world market this year. The cyclone, coming just as the spring harvest was being completed, has put that projection into grave doubt. World grain stocks (not helped by the ethanol craze) are currently at their lowest levels since the 1970s, with several major exporters out of the market because of poor harvests in some places.

Food riots have broken out in some poor countries in the Caribbean, Africa and Asia as the prices of grains, particularly rice, have risen three-fold in the last few months. Analysts expect that the devastation in Myanmar will send these prices even higher.

Thus the humanitarian disaster in Myanmar will extend well beyond its borders.