Rice grower
seeks fiscal intervention on imports
Published on
Wednesday, 06 May 2015 01:27
Written by
FINNIGAN WA SIMBEYE
A LEADING local
rice producer, Kilombero Plantation Limited, Chief Executive Officer, Carter
Coleman wants a Common External Tariff against rice imports into East African
Community to stand at 75 per cent.Mr Coleman said the 75 per cent CET will help
discourage rice imports and give local producers a guarantee of reliable
market.Mr Coleman who is a member of Rice Council of Tanzania said they lobbied
for the maintenance of 75 per cent CET, however East African Community settled
for 35 per cent only."RCT has previously recommended strongly to the President's
Office that the EAC maintain the 75 per cent CET," Coleman pointed out.He
said despite Kenya's bilateral agreement with Pakistan to trade rice with tea,
local rice farmers are exporting to Burundi, Uganda and Kenya.
"In Kenya,
it is very difficult if not impossible to compete with Pakistani rice which
attracts 35 per cent CET and Uganda," he noted saying the country's rice
exports to Uganda fetch 75 per cent duty which is barred in Rwanda.Earlier this
year, EAC Finance Ministers meeting in Nairobi agreed to increase CET on rice
imports from 25 per cent to 35 per cent."We are protecting our local
producers because these commodities can be produced locally," said Finance
Minister Ms Saada Mkuya Salum.Ms Salum challenged local rice producers to increase
their volumes and meet growing domestic demand which has at times prompted
authorities to allow imports which end up hurting them.Commenting on the move
immediately after the EAC decisions, former Minister of Agriculture, Food
Security and Cooperatives, Eng Christopher Chiza opposed the move.
Engineer Chiza said the private sector's arguments that the CET for
rice could have been raised to 75 per cent as is the case with Uganda, is
valid.Eastern African Farmers Federation Chief Executive Officer, Stephen
Muchiri last week told East African Cooperation Minister, Dr Harrison Mwakyembe
that unscrupulous commodity traders are blending the Pakistan imported rice
with locally produced rice which is facing tariff restrictions in the
region."You know Kenya has a trade agreement with Pakistan whereby they
buy tea while we import their rice.
Unscrupulous businessmen are mixing the Pakistan rice with local
rice in Kenya which has attracted a 75 per cent import duty in Uganda and
Rwanda," Mr Muchiri said.During a meeting of EAFF senior officials led by
its president, Philip Kiriro, Muchiri told Dr Mwakyembe that the Pakistan rice
has affected Kenyan rice farmers who cannot enjoy benefits of the EAC Trade
Protocol because of problems with certificate of origin.
"I understand this problem has also affected rice farmers
here, I hope that you as Chairman of the Council of Ministers can help us
address this," he pointed out saying EAFF is working with United States
Agency for International Development in assisting farmers acquire skills,
identify markets and observe quality and standards.Currently after investing
heavily in rice production, local farmers produce over 1.2 million metric tons
of the commodity against annual demand of less than one million tonnes.
Precise
genome editing may improve rice crops
May 6th, 2015
Jennifer Dimas
Rice, a staple crop that feeds half the world's people, may be
improved by a new project that harnesses the power of genome editing.The project, led by Cornell University researcher Adam Bogdanove
and funded by a four-year, $5.5 million National Science Foundation grant, will
serve as proof of principle that genome editing can be used to optimize
quantitative traits, such as height, yield and disease resistance. Very little
is known about quantitative traits expressed to varying degrees in different
individual plants, as they require complex orchestration of many genes. Genome
editing is a new technique that allows researchers to precisely target, cut,
remove and replace DNA in a living cell.Jan Leach, professor of Bioagricultural
Sciences and Pest Management at Colorado State University, is one of the
co-investigators working on the new study with principal investigator
Bogdanove.
The editing technique will focus on such traits as
disease resistance and tolerance to acidic soils. On average, 15 percent of
rice yield is lost worldwide to rice diseases, according to Leach, who is also
a University Distinguished Professor at CSU. Leach and her team will receive
$930,000 for their contributions to the project.Scientists are in a race
against time to double the production of cereal crops, such as rice, on limited
arable land by 2050, when the global population could reach 9.5
billion."We have the ability to open the genome like a book, go to a certain
chapter and a specific word and change the word or correct its spelling,"
said Bogdanove, adding that in this case the words are the DNA sequences that
make up genes.
Bogdanove, a professor of plant pathology and
plant-microbe biology, is also a co-creator of TALENs, a key molecular tool
used in genome editing.The researchers already have identified particular
stretches of DNA as responsible for the quantitative traits of interest. For
example, CSU's Leach, a plant pathologist, has identified several candidate
sequences for disease resistance, and will use the genome editing process to
test whether those sequences enable rice to survive diseases."What is so
beautiful about genome editing is that we can relatively easily make very
precise changes in the DNA sequences to test their importance and their
usefulness for crop improvement," said Leach. "Traditional breeding
to select for quantitative traits is exceedingly difficult and slow. Genome
editing would greatly expedite the process.
"For their work, the researchers will use a newly
released dataset for 3,000 rice genomes. Brad Tonnessen, a CSU graduate student
working on the project, will test this set and other rice genomes for sequences
that are associated with beneficial disease resistance traits.The researchers
also hope to develop new lines of rice that breeders could use to address
diseases and acid soils.Additionally, the project team will develop related
educational materials for middle and high school students and undergraduates,
provide genome editing training workshops for plant biologists, and continually
update a public project website, RiceDiversity.org.The researchers are careful
to note that genome editing should not be confused with genetic engineering;
genome editing entails making precise changes, whereas genetic engineering is
"akin to inserting a particular sentence somewhere at random into the
book," Bogdanove said.
Provided by Colorado State
University
This Phys.org Science News Wire
page contains a press release issued by an organization mentioned above and is
provided to you “as is” with little or no review from Phys.Org staff.
I did not
grant waivers to rice importers – Adesina
The
Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, has denied ever granting duty
waivers or recommending exceptions for rice importers contrary to stories
making the rounds.According to the minister, who appeared before the House of
Representatives ad hoc committee on Tuesday, it is rather some smart importers
that attempted to circumvent government’s rice production policy by importing
huge quantities of the commodity in excess of their approved quota.“Nigeria is
not a banana republic; we have laws here and the laws must work.
Adesina
however declared that he had been “transparent so far” with the rice policy,
adding that the companies simply went ahead to import rice in excess of their
quota even before the approval.He also informed the committee that he got to
understand later that the importers had an agreement with the Nigeria Customs
Service to pay the duties and levies on the excess imports.He said: “Some
imported 100,000 metric tonnes; 300,000 above their quotas. This is now the
duty of the Customs; I set the policy but I don’t collect the money.
They
should have paid for the excess import even before taking the rice out of the
ports,” adding that he was surprised that he was being given a bad name even
when the applicable rules were quite explanatory. This, he said, made him
direct all those concerned to pay all outstanding levies.“I don’t know why the
hunter has become the hunted. On January 2, 2015, I directed that companies
must pay the N36bn. I told the Customs in a letter to apply the duties
accordingly”, Adesina added.The former minister observed that the importers
were afraid that if the progress being made continued “this way in the next two
years, these companies fear that they will be out of business
NSF Grants
Cornell $5.5M for Genome Editing in Rice
May 06, 2015
|
NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) — Cornell University announced this week
that scientists led by Adam Bogdanove have received a $5.5 million grant from
the National Science Foundation for a gene editing project in rice.The
four-year grant will try to provide proof of concept that genome editing can be
used to address important measurable agricultural traits in rice, including
plant height, yield, disease resistance, and soil acidity tolerance. The
scientists will develop a genome editing platform for crop breeding as well as
new lines of rice expressing the improved traits.Bogdanove said that the
scientists have already identified particular stretches of DNA as candidates
for the quantitative traits of interest.
The project will use data released in 2014 from an international project that sequenced 3,000 different
rice genomes from around the world.The grant did not mention the use of any
particular genome editing technologies. Bogdanove is co-creator of
transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs); Daniel Voytas, a
professor at the University of Minnesota, chief scientific officer at Cellectis
Plant Sciences and co-developer of TALENs, is also listed as a co- investigator
on the grant. Rice genetics researcher Susan McCouch is also a co-investigator
and a professor at Cornell.In 2011, the NSF awarded researchers at Cornell and
the University of California, Riverside $4.8 million to study transposable elements in the rice genome.
The Importance Of Silicon In Rice
Production
In Rice Production Silicon is not only useful for computer chips
but also an important micronutrient for rice crops, scientists say. Asian
Scientist Newsroom | May 6, 2015 | In the Lab AsianScientist (May 6, 2015) -
Silicon (Si) is the second most abundant element of the earth's crust after
oxygen. It has long been neglected by ecologists, as it is not considered an
essential nutrient for plants. However, research of recent years has showed
that it is beneficial for the growth of many plants, including important crops
such as rice, wheat and barley. For instance, Si has been found to enhance the
resistance against pests, pathogens and abiotic stresses such as salts, drought
and storms.
Silicon might thus play a
crucial role in the development of ‘sustainable’ rice production systems with
lower or zero input of harmful pesticides. Researchers from the
interdisciplinary LEGATO project on sustainable rice production look in more
detail at the cycle of plant-available Si in contrasting regions of Vietnam and
the Philippines to provide insights on the importance of this element on rice
production. The study, published in the journal Plant and Soil, investigated Si
cycling and budgets on the farm level in the Laguna province of the
Philippines. The data shows that irrigation water can provide a considerable
amount of the Si that is taken up by plants.
In rain water, the concentrations of Si were below the detection
limit of the analytical method and was thus assumed not to be an important Si
source for plants. Another major source of plant-available Si is the
dissolution of solid soil particles. In a subsequent study, the LEGATO
researchers focused on the soil processes that determine the pool of
plant-available Si during the growing period. Recent literature suggests that
the recycling and decomposition of rice straw plays a crucial role for Si
availability.
The farmers should
therefore recycle the straw completely. However, this is not done by all of the
farmers that were interviewed within the LEGATO project. Some of them remove
part of the straw and use it as fertilizer on vegetable fields instead. Over
the long-term, this could have negative effects on the Si supply to rice
plants. Particularly, in regions where soils are strongly weathered and the Si
availability is therefore very low (e.g. the LEGATO study sites in Vietnam),
farmers should consider Si availability as a factor in the management of rice
fields. The article can be found at: Klotzbücher et al. (2015) Forms And Fluxes
Of Potential Plant-available Silicon In Irrigated Lowland Rice Production
(Laguna, the Philippines). ——— Source: Legato Project; Photo: Madeleine
Deaton/Flickr/CC. Read more from Asian Scientist Magazine at:
http://www.asianscientist.com/2015/05/in-the-lab/importance-silicon-rice-production/
Think Rice Education Program
Earns High Marks from Teachers
Teacher
Welcome back, rice!
ARLINGTON, VA -- In honor of March National Nutrition Month, USA
Rice distributed the Think Rice educational lesson plan to more than 2,800
elementary schools in rice-growing counties across the six states. USA Rice
partnered with the award-winning curriculum experts at Young Minds Inspired
(YMI) to develop the program to meet national standards for 3rd - 6th grade
students in social studies, science, and nutrition. As of mid-April, the
program reached an estimated 9,000 teachers and 330,000 students and families.
Ninety-seven percent of teachers rated the program's educational
effectiveness as "good-excellent." The Think Rice kit contained three
student activities, a classroom poster, and a teacher's guide. The student
activities covered topics including: the history of rice in America, the
environmental benefits of growing and eating U.S. rice, and the important role
U.S. rice plays in a balanced diet.Of the teachers who received the materials,
82 percent used (or plan to use) the Think Rice materials, 89 percent displayed
the wall poster, and 87 percent shared (or plan to share) the program with
other teachers. The program materials were downloaded more
than 1,300 times from YMI's website and will be available indefinitely so
teachers from all around the country can use the activities. Below are a few
quotes from teacher comment cards and surveys:
"It's very important for our kids to know where rice comes
from and its nutritional importance.
Thank you." - CA teacher
"Wonderful program. Kids enjoyed it. Will use it next year
too!" - AR teacher
"Enjoyed the poster. Its message is clear and has great
information to share." - MO teacher
"Good lesson because it ties in nicely with nutrition and
MyPlate too!" - MS teacher
"Great information. This is a great way to get children
interested." - LA teacher
"An excellent program. My co-teachers enjoyed it as well.
Thank you." -- TX teacher
"It's great to hear that the Think Rice program is a
beneficial tool for teachers to integrate into the curriculum," said Byron
Holmes, chairman of the USA Rice Nutrition Subcommitee. "This is something
we can use for years to come because teachers have confirmed its educational
quality and because it covers important topics for the U.S. rice industry,
which are coincidentally topics of great interest to teachers and
students."
Contact: Deborah Willenborg (703) 236-1444
USA RICE FEDERATION
|
CCC Announces Prevailing World Market Prices
|
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WASHINGTON,
DC -- The Department of Agriculture's Commodity Credit Corporation
today announced the following prevailing
world market prices of milled and rough rice, adjusted for U.S. milling
yields and location, and the resulting marketing loan-gain (MLG) and loan
deficiency payment (LDP) rates applicable to the 2014 crop, which became
effective today at 7:00 a.m., Eastern Time (ET). Prices are
unchanged from the previous announcement.
This week's prevailing world market prices and MLG/LDP rates are based on the following U.S. milling yields and the corresponding loan rates:
The next program announcement is scheduled for May 13, 2015. |
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CME Group/Closing Rough Rice Futures
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USA
RICE FEDERATION
Farmers
battle blackbirds to save rice crops
Posted: May
06, 2015 5:02 AM PSTUpdated: May 06, 2015 6:19 AM PST
Gibson said he has been fortunate enough to only see minimal damage from blackbirds. "It varies area to area and year to year," he said. "It could all change at a moment's notice. You never know what's gonna blow in."
http://www.kait8.com/story/28986907/farmers-battle-blackbirds-to-save-rice-crops?utm_source=USA+Rice+Daily%2C+May+6%2C+2015&utm_campaign=Friday%2C+December+13%2C+2013&utm_medium=email
Mending
fences with Iran, despite the US, is not a bad idea for India
|
As shipping minister Nitin Gadkari lands in the
Iranian capital of Tehran, the buzz of him signing an agreement to develop the
Chabahar port is palpable. This port will give India an alternative - and
easier - route to Afghanistan and Central Asia.
|
The government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has hastened
the process, and decided to use the books of Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust and
Kandla Port Trust to fund the development of the port.The Indian government
also decided to ignore warnings from the US. In fact, at a public function in
New Delhi on Wednesday, the US Ambassador to India, Richard Verma, reiterated
that countries engaging with Iran must wait for the outcome of Iran's
discussions with the P5+1 group - including the United States, Russia, China,
France, Britain, and Germany.
The next round of discussion will start on May 12 at Geneva with
the European Union, and the rest of the partners will join on May 15. The aim
is to finish talks on June 30. Most observers expect a positive outcome.New
Delhi believes that the development of the port does not violate UN sanctions,
and India is not obliged to follow what US and EU sanctions say.This port will
give Iran an opportunity to open up to the western world once the sanctions are
lifted. PM Modi is hurrying things up before Tehran gets time to rethink on
this deal. This sort of co-operation will help both Iran and India, as the
Persian country will get a boost up during the negotiations, which will help
Modi during his forthcoming China visit.
In fact, India also wanted to sign another pact to seize
development rights of Farzad B block, but Iran is not keen to allow gas
marketing rights.The earlier NDA government led by Atal Behari Vajpayee had
envisaged this project in 2003, but it was delayed because of several issues.
During the UPA government, India not only reduced oil imports from Iran, but
also ran into rough weather with Tehran.Last year, Iran increased import duty
on Indian Basmati rice from 10 per cent to 45 per cent.
This put rice traders and farmers from Punjab, Haryana and
western UP in a precarious situation. The area under basmati increased during
the kharif season of 2014 to 8.16 lakh hectares (20.40 lakh acres), up from
5.50 lakh hectares in 2013, largely on the possibilities of the Iran market.
After the import duty increase, prices had crashed. But now when the farmers
are ready to sow this crop again, a revival of good relations with Tehran will
boost their confidence.What is more important is that this port can increase
New Delhi's position in regional diplomacy.
The Modi government is pushing its weight behind this. In fact,
last week a senior US diplomat suggested that India could help bring Syria's
President Bashar al-Assad and the rebels on to the talking table to end Syria's
crisis. This was a big shift from India's continuous stance of staying away,
and the foreign office here distanced itself from this, by calling the
statement a misunderstanding.India under Modi is looking at a larger role in
West Asia. Iran could be an opening window. This allows India to sit at the mouth
of Gulf of Hurmuz and cut freight paid by traders - who are keen on West and
Central Asian markets - by 30 per cent. Tehran also wants New Delhi to assist
in developing a free trade zone near Chabahar.
This port is a few miles away from Gwadar (a port in Pakistan
being developed with China's help), and makes more sense for India to sit
there. This is strategically important as well.Chinese premier Xi Jinping
agreed to invest $46 billion in Pakistan to develop road infrastructure, energy
and improve connectivity with all important cities including the strategically
important Gwadar port. Chinese Overseas Ports Holding Company has taken over
the responsibility to develop this port, and agreed to help Pakistan in
developing a free economic zone there, including setting up of a refinery
there. Recently, the Pakistani government informed its Senate about acquiring
2,281 acres of land to develop this region. China is also helping Pakistan in
completing the $2-billion Iran-Pakistan pipeline, along with laying another
pipeline from Gwadar to Kashgar in Xingjian.
The problem for India is, this gives their
bête noire Pakistan an edge, especially on how to deal with Afghanistan.
Despite this, India
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6th May(Wednesday)
,2015 Daily Global Rice E-Newsletter
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