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Connecting Bangladeshi rice farmers to commercial buyers
Tuesday, 20 December 2016 05:15
A USAID-funded project, Feed the
Future Bangladesh Rice Value Chain (RVC), aimed at improving the rice value
chain is helping 365 farmer organisations in southern Bangladesh to grow
premium-quality crops to gain access to national buyers
The project aims to empower
farmers to produce high value varieties of rice in bulk quantities. (Image
source: Trung Hieu Dang/Pixabay)
The project works towards developing the capacity of the farmer
groups who grow the same high-value rice varieties, composed of 10,500 farmer
members, to produce their crops in bulk in order to improve opportunities to do
business with millers and food companies.RVC was present at the recent 3rd Rice
and Grains Tech Expo along with another project, Stress-Tolerant Rice for
Africa and South Asia (STRASA), led by the International Rice Research
Institute. STRASA said that it is is speeding up dissemination of seeds of
improved rice varieties to farmers in areas prone to drought, flooding, and
other severe environmental conditions.
“South Bangladesh is one of the
country's poorest areas and most vulnerable to cyclone-induced disasters. It
also has a much lower level of industrialisation. So, all the national food
processing companies have their bases, including mills and factories, in the
northern and western parts of the country,” said RVC project leader Tim
Russell.
The organisation commented that
after RVC spearheaded the creation of farmer groups with the capacity to grow
crops and varieties in demand throughout the country, processing companies have
begun to set up buying operations in southern Bangladesh.At the Expo, the
farmer organisations and their members had the opportunity to link with
national companies that produce agriculture and forestry products, farm
machinery, and new technologies for rice production and marketing. The buyers
are primarily interested in purchasing Chinigura rice from the farmers who now
have the capacity to grow this Bangladeshi aromatic variety in bulk, .
Indonesia Books Highest Jump in Food Security Index
TEMPO.CO,Jakarta - Agriculture Minister Amran Sulaiman said that Indonesia's food
resiliency has improved over the last two years as reflected by end of staple
food imports. Amran claimed that Indonesia recorded the highest jump in the
food security index in 2016.
"No rice imports, onion
imports, and chili pepper imports; corn imports dropped by 60 percent, as
acknowledged by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The world recognizes that we
have the highest jump [in the food security index] in the world," Amran
said as quoted by Antara on Tuesday, December 20, 2016.
The Global Food Security Index
(GFSI) 2016 shows that Indonesia achieves the highest increase with an index of
2.7, and the food availability rank of 66.
Amran explained that food
supplies remained stable with rice productions that increased by 6.64 percent
in 2015 and 4.97 percent in 2016, despite El-Nino and La-Nina. Over the last
two years, rice productions climbed by 8.3 million tons or worth Rp 38.5
trillion (US$2.9 billion).
"In 2016, there were no
recommendation to import premium rice, and we managed to address distribution
issues," Amran added.
The Agriculture Ministry and the
Central Statistics Agency forecasted that the production of dried paddy reached
79.14 tons in 2016, increasing by 3.74 million tons or 4.97 percent when
compared to 2015. Corn productions stood at 23.16 million tons, increasing by
3.55 million tons or 18.11 percent when compared to 2015.
Amran also revealed that the
Ministry managed to address price hikes in December due to famine.
"For the first time in 71
years, we don’t have famine in December. Usually, prices are high in December.
But now, prices of rice and onion are going down," Amran claimed
Thailand exports 9.3 million
tons of rice Jan to mid-Dec 2016: commerce ministry
Farmers spray pesticide over their rice field
in Nakhonsawan province, north of Bangkok, Thailand, December 17, 2016. REUTERS/Chaiwat
Subprasom
Thailand
has exported 9.3 million tonnes of rice so far this year, mostly to China and
countries in Africa, the commerce ministry said on Monday, well short of the
government's target for 2016.From January to Dec. 14, 2016 Thailand signed
export agreements for 9.3 million tonnes of rice worth 146 million baht ($4.07
million), said Duangporn Rodphaya, chief of the ministry's foreign trade
department.
Early
this month, Commerce Minister Apiradee Tantraporn said Thailand's rice exports
this year would reach 10.5 million tonnes, above an earlier target of 9.5
million tonnes.
In a statement on Monday, Duangporn said Thailand, the
world's second-largest rice exporter after India, will meet its rice export
target this year and has until early January to finalize export agreements.
The
top importers of Thai rice this year were Benin, Ivory Coast, South Africa,
China and Cameroon, she added.
Thailand
has stocks of about 8 million tonnes left over from a rice-buying scheme under
the previous government that paid farmers well above market rates for their
rice.
Most
of the rice has been stored for more than five years, the foreign trade
department said, making it difficult to sell it at target prices and to find
potential buyers.
The
current military government has been trying to sell off stockpiles from the
scheme through several state auctions since it took power in 2014.Duangporn
said the rice could be used for industrial purposes, adding that the government
plans to offload all of the remaining rice stocks from the scheme by end-2017.
($1 = 35.8600 baht)
(Reporting by Amy Sawitta Lefevre and Panarat
Thepgumpanat; Editing by Sunil Nair)
THE National Rice Policy Committee
is soon to consider releasing about 5 million tonnes of deteriorated and rotten
rice for alternative energy production to cut stockpiling costs.
Duangporn Rodphaya, director-general of the
Commerce Ministry’s Foreign Trade Department, said it would in early January
propose to the committee that it consider ways to clear out the stockpiles,
particularly rotten rice, which makes up about 5 million of the 8 million
tonnes remaining in the government’s stocks.The Commerce Ministry will discuss
with the Energy Ministry the possibility of using some of this stockpiled rice
to produce energy. The purchase price might be quite low, but it would cut down
on the rice stocks and thereby save warehousing costs, which currently are
Bt510 million per month or Bt17 million per day, Duangporn sai
