Tapping potential for agri trade
October
16, 2017
Due to
shortage of arable land and freshwater resources in China, the country needs to
import land-extensive crops (such as wheat and rice) to feed its population.
Further,
with rising living standards, the Chinese demand for agricultural imports is
gradually moving up, which is likely to create agro-based trade opportunities
in countries having substantial potential in agriculture produce.
Pakistan can maximise its
agricultural exports to China by improving production efficiency and quality
China’s
demand for cotton yarn and rice imports is met by the emerging economies of
Asia, such as Pakistan, Vietnam, Thailand and India. However, the relative
share of China’s import of these products has witnessed some changes recently.
Keeping
in view the fact that agriculture sector accounts for around 20 per cent of
Pakistan’s GDP and employs over 40pc of the country’s labour force, both
Pakistan and China have agreed to enhance cooperation on agriculture under the
China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
Various
agricultural projects have been initiated to get maximum benefit of the CPEC
initiative, which include:
Sino-Pakistan
Hybrid Rice Research Centre at Karachi University: Both countries have recently
initiated research to produce high-yielding and high-quality rice. Setting up a
rice research centre is a right step towards achieving the objective.
Meat
production and processing facilities in KP: Setting up of meat production and
processing facilities in KP would help increase Pakistan’s meat exports to
China, as well as, to Afghanistan and Central Asian market.
KP-China
Sustainable Donkey Development Programme: To increase the donkey population in
Pakistan so as to ensure interrupted backward supply for export of live animals
and raising income of donkey breeders and traders.
— SBP staff notes: ‘Dynamics of Pakistan’s trade balance with
China’
Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, October 16th,
2017
Last update 09:47 | 16/10/2017
VietNamNet Bridge - The principle that
Vietnam needs to pursue now is not to confront nature, but to respond
appropriately and flexibly to new circumstances, such as climate change, by restructuring the economy,
according to Hoang Quoc Tuan, a renowned agriculture expert.
About inaccurate perceptions, Tuan said one of these is that the Mekong Delta needs to serve as the ‘rice granary’ and ‘rice pot’ of Vietnam and the world.
FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) and IRRI (International Rice Research Institute) affirmed that with natural conditions, growing rice is the best way for the Mekong Delta, but not the way Vietnam is following.
|
The principle that Vietnam needs to pursue now is not to
confront nature, but to respond appropriately and flexibly to new
circumstances
|
Tuan also
pointed out that Vietnam has the wrong view about ‘national food security’. FAO
defines ‘food security’ as the capability to have food, which could be rice,
maize, oats, fish, shrimp, vegetables and fruits. There is a wide range of
foodstuff for people to use, not only raise.
Meanwhile, Vietnam understands ‘food’ as ‘rice’ and strives to ensure more than 10 kilos per head per month. “The household which doesn’t grow rice but produces one kilogram of shrimp a day would have better ‘food security’ than the household which produces 10 kilograms of rice. This is simply because a kilo of shrimp can be sold for VND200,000, and a kilo of rice for VND6,000,” Tuan said.
Some foreign experts commented that the Mekong Delta is blessed by nature, but it has a critical weak point which is identity, i.e. products of localities in the region are nearly the same.
In fact, the problem lies in mismanagement which can be seen throughout the country, not only in the Mekong Delta.
“There are industrial zones (IZs) in almost every district in Mekong Delta, including in the remote and mountainous districts. There are not many investors occupying all the IZs,” he said.
Since growing rice cannot bring income high enough to cover basic needs, the farmers in Dong Thap Muoi area in Dong Thap province have sprayed salt into fields to create fields for shrimp hatchery. But the method cannot bring the desired results.
According to Tuan, there are three things that need to be done to restructure Mekong Delta amid climate change. First, checking existing policies to find problems. Second, consulting with the community. Third, collecting people’s opinions about the policies to be applied.
Meanwhile, Vietnam understands ‘food’ as ‘rice’ and strives to ensure more than 10 kilos per head per month. “The household which doesn’t grow rice but produces one kilogram of shrimp a day would have better ‘food security’ than the household which produces 10 kilograms of rice. This is simply because a kilo of shrimp can be sold for VND200,000, and a kilo of rice for VND6,000,” Tuan said.
Some foreign experts commented that the Mekong Delta is blessed by nature, but it has a critical weak point which is identity, i.e. products of localities in the region are nearly the same.
In fact, the problem lies in mismanagement which can be seen throughout the country, not only in the Mekong Delta.
“There are industrial zones (IZs) in almost every district in Mekong Delta, including in the remote and mountainous districts. There are not many investors occupying all the IZs,” he said.
Since growing rice cannot bring income high enough to cover basic needs, the farmers in Dong Thap Muoi area in Dong Thap province have sprayed salt into fields to create fields for shrimp hatchery. But the method cannot bring the desired results.
According to Tuan, there are three things that need to be done to restructure Mekong Delta amid climate change. First, checking existing policies to find problems. Second, consulting with the community. Third, collecting people’s opinions about the policies to be applied.
Yuan
Longping's hybrid rice sets new record in production(1/3)
2017-10-16 17:00Ecns.cnEditor:Yao Lan
1
Yuan Longping (C), a renowned Chinese developer of hybrid rice,
is seen in a rice field in Handan City, North China’s Hebei Province. The
province’s department of science and technology has verified that a hybrid rice
project headed by Yuan, known as Xiangliangyou 900, achieved an average yield
of 1,149.01 kilograms of rice per mu (about 0.07 hectares) of farmland, setting
a new world record, according to the China National Hybrid Rice Research and
Development Center. (Photo/VCG)
Climate-smart farming needs machines
,
16.10.17 
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The revival of Pokkali, a traditional salt- and flood-resistant
rice and fish farming system in Kerala, requires mechanisation to expand
sustainably
Part
of the climate-resilient Pokkali rice-prawn farming tracts are facing land-use
change to informal jetties and other infrastructure (Photo by Manipadma Jena)
As farmers in many regions of India revert tentatively to traditional
farm systems to ensure food security in an era of climate change, mechanisation
must be given high priority in adaptation projects, say agricultural
scientists. Otherwise, these may fail because not only are the soil, sea
and rain conditions less dependable now, but socio-economic status and earlier
plentiful availability of farm labour also have undergone drastic change.
Pokkali, the centuries-old family farming system producing salt
and flood resistant rice and shrimp alternated on the same farms in Kerala’s
tidal-water tracts is an example, say scientists. Although the state government
has been trying to revive Pokkali (pronounced Pokkaalli) since 2013 as a climate
adaptation strategy, it has not been able to take off as expected.
“Pokkali is a unique form of cultivation. The effort to revive
it was received with enthusiasm but interest dwindled because of shortage of
mechanization,” Leena Kumari S, senior plant scientist and Registrar of the
Thrissur-headquartered Kerala Agricultural University, told indiaclimatedialogue.net.
Some 30 years ago, this traditional rice with shrimp was grown
over 25,000 hectares in the waterlogged acidic coastal regions of Ernakulam,
Alappuzha and Thrissur districts. In 2015, the area had reduced by 90%.
Currently, 2,200 hectares is regularly farmed and 5,000 hectares only
occasionally, according to Kerala’s fisheries
department.
“Labour is a problem, because much of the Pokkali tract is now
located in the Cochin metro area. Here a variety of wage labour is available
and traditionally skilled Pokkali farm hands have found regular work at the
metro rail line construction,” Leena Kumari said. “The rice production cost is
escalating because (during harvest) there is no option but to procure these
scarce labourers at high wages.”
“Manual harvesting is very tedious and fewer people are now
willing to stand in mud and chest-high water to cut the grain. If not that,
then rowing in country boats in the water channels criss-crossing the paddy to
get the job done,” she added.
“As October-end harvest time approaches, getting harvesters has
become a major headache,” B.K. Kamalahasan, a farmer, told indiaclimatedialogue.netin
his Kidangara village farm in Alappuzha district. “Usually women with
traditional expertise are the only people who can do this job. Many of them are
now old and unable and the younger generation is not interested. They have many
earning options including migrating out.”
It has been five years since the 53-year-old decided to give up
the family’s four-hectare Pokkali farm in Pattanakkad village to his younger
brother. He now traps schools of freshwater fingerlings as they flow into his
two-hectare hybrid-rice farm through a narrow inlet from Achenkovil river,
growing them alongside the paddies in monsoon for a bit of extra income. Of the
190-hectare Pokkali tract in Pattanakad, only 57 hectares are now in use,
Kamalahasan said, quoting government figures.
Climate-smart system
Pokkali fields lie on the edge of Kerala’s backwaters on
low-lying lands, watered by both high tides and meandering river channels,
water-logged for most part of the year except early summer.
The traditional Pokkali rice plant, experts say, can tolerate
salinity equivalent to 6 to 8 grams of salt in 1,000 grams of water. For
comparison, seawater has 35 grams salt per 1,000 grams of water. One of the
highest salinity tolerant paddy varieties in the world, its gene Saltol quantitative
trait locus (QTL) is widely used in
international rice labs.
Adapted to a challenging terrain over centuries, it is also
tolerant to soil acidity and submergence, which make it very suitable for
climate adaptive agriculture. It grows as high as 4.5 to 6 feet. On high tide
or river flooding, it holds its grain-bearing head upright above water for up
to 10 days, while the plant itself bends over and collapses. Sowing is done on
1.5-foot high soil mounds constructed manually, starting as the heavy southwest
monsoon in June flushes out the salt from the land.
Struggling
against several odds including critical shortage of manual labour, only a few
hundred traditional Pokkali farmers in Kerala have kept the heritage farming
system alive (Photo by Manipadma Jena)
In the mid-November harvest, only the grain-bearing portion or
top 30 centimetres is cut, and the rest of the stalk is left to decay in the
fields. It gives back what it had drawn from the soil and also becomes feed for
the young prawns that the high tides later carry in.
By December-end, the Pokkali tracts are ready for prawn
filtration — the embankments strengthened against the tides and sluice gates
fixed through which the seawater will flush in and out. Once the prawn larvae
and fish are trapped in the fields, they are grown for 3-4 months. Over this
period their excrement in an inherently fertile soil provides nutrients for the
next rice crop cycle for which no chemicals are needed nor used, as these would
harm the prawn.
“The indigenous wisdom of Pokkali cultivation has a great role
in maintaining the ecosystem of the farm tracts. It is fully organic, no
fertiliser or insecticide is applied, nor is weeding necessary. Success depends
on judicious water-flow regulation through the sluice gates,” Thommy Thomas, an
81-year-old veteran farmer of Allapuzha, told indiaclimatedialogue.net.
While the traditional Pokkali rice yield is a low 1-1.5 tonnes
per hectare, the income was made up by the prawn and fish yields of 200 to 500
kg from one hectare. Above all, farmers earn through the year with what in
earlier years was low investment. Rice research centres in Kerala have since
come up with higher-yielding seeds for the saline tracts.
Lure of prawn export
The farmers however had another reason, beyond income, to keep
up the brackish-water farming. It was ecological disaster to leave the Pokkali
fields fallow because within a few years adjoining sweet-water land too became
acidic and fell to ruin while drinking water sources too became brackish.
Eventually, however, this is exactly what happened, reducing
regularly cultivated Pokkali fields to merely a tenth of the productive area of
three decades ago. Bit by bit the tracts were left fallow, tidal embankment
fell to disrepair and seawater came in deeper inland. Or, they were used for growing
prawn year-round, converted into coconut farms, or land- use irretrievably
changed to build jetties and other infrastructure.
“A few years back we had an attack of bacterial infection (White
Spot Symptom) in these prawn farms and exports were hard hit. If year after
year farmers go for prawn all the residues and excreta will result in bacteria
spread. In the long run, this proves more disadvantageous,” Leena Kumari told indiaclimatedialogue.net.
“Profits are only sustainable where the rice-prawn cycle is maintained, because
rice crops use up the prawn’s waste, cleansing the soil every year. Farmers
must be made aware of this.”
Along
with the prawn, brackish water Pokkali farms grow the much-in-demand Pearls
Spot and an assortment of other marketable fish (Photo by Manipadma Jena)
There is conflict of interest between paddy farmers and an
aquaculture lobby, and people are more interested in growing only prawn because
of higher returns, according to Francis Kalathungal of the Pokkali Samrakshana
Samithi, an organisation set up to protect the ancient farming system.
Heritage grain’s trade potential
In 2008, in a bid to bring back this heritage variety, which was
organic and was packed with protein and antioxidants, sustaining fishers out at
sea for a full exerting day. With brown large-sized looks and a flavour
uniquely its own, it got a Geographical Indication (GI) status. GI
recognition is essentially a trade copyright and helps the designated local
producers for higher domestic trade and exports.
The government offers a minimum support price of INR 50 (USD
0.77) for a kilogram of the Pokkali rice, several times the price offered for
commercial varieties. Exporters too are ready to pay INR 150 (USD 2.30) a kg,
but the current production is not enough to meet either demands. “Pokkali has
got GI status but we could not commercially exploit this,” Leena Kumari rued.
Mechanising to revive
During the 2013 rice harvest, the agricultural engineering
division of the Kerala Agricultural University piloted a prototype amphibian
harvesting machine in Alappuzha, meant specifically for use in inundated
Pokkali fields.
“It worked, but it has to be sustainable, not good at a
demonstration alone. A lightweight machine but spacious enough to hold the
harvest is what is needed,” Leena Kumari said.
In 2015, the university called for tenders for a harvester,
specifying a machine 15 ft in length, weighing 1500 kg with a 45 horsepower
engine, equipped with hydraulic operated and detachable rake and trailer.
Corrosion resistant, rotating rubber chain tracks and a salt water resistant
aluminium alloy body able to move at an average six km per hour speed on both
water and land were other requirements. Such a machine is yet to be ready.
“It should be able to float, to harvest and to transport the
harvested stalks. It is not that easy to develop a machine to these
specifications. A lot of effort is ongoing. It could take years,” Leena Kumari
told indiaclimatedialogue.net.
Kerala’s fisheries department, which secured INR 337.3 million
(USD 5.2 million) funding from the National Adaptation Fund on Climate Change (NAFCC)
to restore 600 hectares low lying wetlands for climate-resilient Pokkali and
another similar farming system, ignores mechanisation altogether, admitted by
most experts to be a major hurdle to Pokkali revival.
On the contrary, the project running through 2016 to 2019
focuses on strengthening stone and earthen embankments on coastal backwater
margins to reduce saltwater ingress into farms and, after revival, ensuring
more people like olden days are employed in them.
Surviving climate vagaries
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
estimates in 2046–2065 (relative to 1986–2005), global average sea-level rise
could be 0.17 to 0.32 metres and as much as 33% of coastal land and wetland
habitats are likely to be lost in the next 100 years.
The immediate risk for Kerala with a 570 km coastline on the
Arabian Sea, and other densely populated coasts, however, are storm surges. In
Kerala, high tides can reach over 12 ft in height, according to its disaster
management plan.
Coastal intertidal wetlands are one of the most productive
ecosystems on earth supporting high biodiversity. In India of the 45 million
hectares over which rice is grown, 2.5 million hectares are on coastal saline
soils in 11 Indian states.
Of the 100,000 varieties of indigenous rice in India, most have
been replaced by a handful of modern hybrids after India’s 1960s green revolution.
Those that are still surviving in challenging conditions like Pokkali are proof
of the amazing genetic adaptation ability of local landraces and their
conservation is crucial for India’s food security, scientists emphasise.
http://indiaclimatedialogue.net/2017/10/16/mechanise-climate-smart-farming-food-security/ First
spring paddy cultivation yields 77MT
The
ministry is also planning of growing rice three times a year
Spring
paddy cultivation, which the agriculture ministry tried on a commercial scale
earlier this year, produced more than 77 metric tonnes (MT) of paddy,
agriculture minister Yeshey Dorji said.
Spring
paddy was grown on 533 acres in Gelephu (136 acres) and Chuzergang (185) in
Sarpang dzongkhag, Yoeseltse (118) in Samtse and Khamethang (94) in
Samdrupjongkhar.
“This
being the first commercial scale cultivation there were some lessons learnt,”
Lyonpo Yeshey Dorji said at the meet the press session on October 13.
In some
of the areas, irrigation facilities were lagging because they were under
repair.
The
ministry transplanted in the beginning of March and the harvesting coincided
with monsoon. “We’re going to transplant early next season from mid February to
harvest before the monsoon,” the minister said.
He said
there was labour shortage and most of the areas were not suitable for
mechanisation. “So we have started consolidation of farm machinery in some
places,” he said. “These are some of the problems, but we cannot reduce them at
once as agriculture is a sensitive business and depends on lots of factors.”
The
minister said that since paddy cultivation was organic, the yield was low.
Although
spring rice cultivation was initiated more than a decade ago, it was done on a
small scale, he said.
The
ministry is considering to grow rice three times a year with the 15 months
cycle especially in the southern parts of the country.
“With
this initiative and incremental reverting of fallow land to cultivation, we’re
hopeful of achieving close to rice self-sufficiency or at least 90 percent,” he
said.
The
crop sector alone contributed Nu 14 billion to the gross domestic product of
the economy according to a World Bank report.
In
2012, rice production was 52,252MT. The yield was 1,493kg an acre which has
today increased to 1,604kg an acre, he said.
In
2012, the paddy production was 78,000MT, which jumped to 85,090 MT last year.
So between 2012 and 2016, production increased by more than 7,000MT, the
minister said.
“The
rice industry in Bhutan is worth about Nu 4.375 billion,” he said.
Paddy
fields area expanded from 52,252 acres under cultivation in 2012 to 53,000
acres last year.
In
terms of rice self-sufficiency, it has increased from 53 percent to 58.7
percent as of this year, agriculture statistics show.
He said
that the five percent would be equal to more than 30,000MT or 5,000 acres. “So
paddy production has been improving,” lyonpo said.
He said
more than seven dzongkhags are rice self-sufficient. Top of the list is Punakha
with 267 percent, followed by Tsirang with 216 percent, Paro, Dagana, and
Samtse, among others.
Lyonpo
said that the ministry continues to invest in electric fencing, hybrid seeds,
machinery, research and technology, institutional changes, and farm mechanisation.
He said
that agriculture is identified as one of the five jewels for economic
development and that the media would know better about whether agriculture has
developed.
“Look
around. In 2013, most of us, including the Cabinet ministers were lean and thin
and today we’re well nourished, including me.”
http://www.kuenselonline.com/first-spring-paddy-cultivation-yields-77mt/
ALGON, 16 foreign
partners to create 5.9m jobs from new agriculture scheme
As part of steps to
boost agriculture in the country, the Association of Local Government of
Nigeria(ALGON) and 16 foreign partners and institutes are expected to float a
new scheme which will create 5,959, 800 jobs nationwide.
The scheme will lead to
the generation of 7,700 jobs in each of the 774 local government areas in the
country.
But the new initiative
called Comprehensive Agricultural Plans for Local Government Areas (CLAP) will
begin with a seminar on October 26 and 27.
A statement last night
said ALGON has initiated the process of C-LAP at grassroots level to prepare a
Comprehensive Local Agriculture Plan (C-LAP) through participatory process
involving various organizations and stakeholders.
The statement said: “The project is expected to generate direct employment of
2700 in nursery production, pack houses and integrated model farms, mega food
parks processing units and indirect employment of 5000 persons per LGA is as
follows: Managerial and scientific manpower (100 persons); Skilled manpower in
Mega Food Park (600 persons); Unskilled manpower (2000 persons) and Indirect
employment like transport, marketing etc. (5000 persons).
The
heavyweight international partners of ALGON are Global AgriSystem Pvt Ltd;
Progressive Research Organization for Welfare (PROW); Ananya Seeds (P) Ltd;
International Tractors Limited; Horticulture Produce Management Institute, HPMI
(India); Population, Women & Environment Development Organization(Nepal);
International Rice Research Institute(Philippines); Ananya Seeds (P) Ltd.; Top
Greenhouses Limited; and International Tractors Limited.
Others
are Michigan State University; G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and
Technology; Carrier Point University; New Age Green Solution Pvt Limited;
Afghan Agro Services; eEco Solutions Pvt Limited; Horticulture Produce
Management Institute; M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation.
The
statement explained why ALGON decided to collaborate with the 16 foreign
partners.
It
added: “Nigeria is an agrarian society, with agriculture contributing
about 24 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). About 70 percent of the
population live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for livelihood.
“Nigeria
is presently facing several challenges in Agriculture sector. These
problems can be attributed to natural and human cause, affecting overall
economic development and growth.
“This has consequently undermined socio-economic growth and thus constitutes a
threat to the Federal Government of Nigeria’s “Vision 2020”. Recent assessments
of the situation in the country confirm that the scale of the problem rise
above what communities, Local Governments, States and Federal Government can
address without help from development partners.
Consequently,
The Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON) is adopting a bottom-up
approach through a Comprehensive Plan for Development of Agriculture (C-LAP) at
“Local Government Level” in 774 LGAs of Nigeria towards the improvement of the
agricultural sector.
“Thus
C-LAP is an integrated and participatory action plan for the development of
LGAs in agriculture and allied sectors. CLAP will add value to Nigeria’s
agricultural raw materials and integrate Nigeria into world agricultural
markets.
“ALGON
has initiated the process of C-LAP at grassroots level to prepare a
Comprehensive Local Agriculture Plan (C-LAP) through participatory process
involving various organizations and stakeholders
Vietnam’s rice prices up on low supply
Low supplies boosted rice prices in Vietnam this week amid
prospects of fresh purchase interest from the Philippines, while deals with
Bangladesh remained the sole bright spot for the otherwise subdued demand in
top Asian exporters.
Traders in Vietnam
quoted the benchmark 5-percent broken rice at $390-395 a tonne, free-on-board
(FOB) Saigon, up from the $385-$390 last week. "Supply is low after the
summer-autumn crop was completely harvested, bringing prices up. Some sellers
held back grains in an attempt to make larger profits," a trader in Ho Chi
Minh city said. "As for trading, Philippines will import rice from
Vietnam, Thailand and other countries under the MAV (Minimum Access Volume)
2017. I think they'll buy around 290,000 tonnes from Vietnam, same as last
year.
" However, another trader said no deals have been
finalised. The Philippines opened the rice import scheme, Minimum Access Volume
2017, in August to private traders in Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan and India,
the National Food Authority (NFA) said on its website. As of late September,
importers in the Philippines have applied to buy over 2.2 million tonnes,
mostly from Thailand and Vietnam, according to the NFA document. Meanwhile,
Bangladesh, which has emerged as a major importer this year after floods
damaged its crops and sent domestic rates soaring, has finalised deals to
import 250,000 tonnes of parboiled rice from Thailand and India. Bangladesh has
also approved the purchase of 100,000 tonnes from Myanmar, setting aside a rift
over an ongoing Rohingya refugee crisis.
In India, the 5 percent broken parboiled rice prices eased
by $2 per tonne to the $400-$403 level on expectations of a rise in supply.
"From the end of this month, supplies from the new season crop will
rise," said an exporter in Kakinada in the southern state of Andhra
Pradesh. Meanwhile, Thailand's benchmark 5-percent broken rice prices dropped
to $380-$388 a tonne, FOB Bangkok, from the $385-$390 range last week, traders
said. "With the exception of Bangladesh, there hasn't been much demand
from other countries. We expect Bangladesh to demand more rice until the end of
the year," said a Bangkok-based trader.
Thai prices are likely to remain stable, traders said, even
as the market takes stock of the impact of recent floods in the country.
"It is still too soon to tell whether there will be damage to crops
because most of the rice has already been harvested," said Charoen
Laothamatas, president of the Thai Rice Exporters Association.
https://fp.brecorder.com/2017/10/20171015226534/
Methane good news
G.S. Mudur
New Delhi: An independent
academic study has found India's emissions of methane, a major greenhouse gas
that drives global warming, are consistent with the government's estimates and
have shown little growth over the past five years.The study has found that
India's average emissions of methane emissions - mainly from paddy fields and
cows, among other sources - were about 22 trillion grams per year between 2010 and
2015, consistent with India's emissions reported to the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The scientists who conducted the
study say their estimates for India's methane emissions are about 30 per cent
smaller than figures in a global inventory of greenhouse gases calculated by an
international research consortium called the Emissions Database for Global
Atmospheric Research.
"Our approach should help
bolster confidence in India's official estimates," said Anita Ganesan, an
environmental chemist at the University of Bristol in the UK who led the study
published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. "Estimating the
methane emissions is particularly challenging, and this work demonstrates a new
way to do that."
The concentrations of methane,
the second-most powerful greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide, have been growing
in the atmosphere in recent years. But methane emissions are much harder to
estimate because they emerge from biological systems influenced by the
environment.
"Methane emissions from rice paddies, for example, are
influenced by temperature, rainfall or irrigation, fertiliser applications, so
emissions can vary dramatically from one place to another and at different
times," Ganesan said. "This makes methane more difficult to account
for in inventories."
Ganesan and her colleagues from institutions in Germany,
India, the UK and the US combined satellite imagery and ground and aircraft
observations with computer models of the atmosphere and winds to arrive at estimates
for methane emissions for each month between 2010 and 2015.
Their study showed spikes in methane between June and
September each year, the monsoon season, when paddy is grown across the
country. The stable methane emissions in India contrast with China where
measurements have suggested increasing emissions of methane in recent years.
Ganesan said the growth in China has been shown to be driven
by large increases in fossil fuel emissions of methane. In India, fossil fuels
make up a much smaller source of the methane emissions, which are
overwhelmingly generated from agriculture - paddy and livestock.
The study also showed a small winter peak in emissions,
which the scientists say could be due to winter rice that makes up about 14 per
cent of total rice production in India or due to increases in fossil fuel
emissions.
Rice imports in 2018 to hit 1.7 MMT–USDA
-
October 15, 2017
In
Photo: A farmer piles up grain harvested from a rice field in Nueva Ecija. FILE
PHOTO
Philippine rice imports
next year could increase by more than half to 1.7 million metric tons (MMT),
from the 1.1 MMT projected for 2017, according to the United States Department
of Agriculture (USDA).The USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (USDA-FAS) had
earlier said that the scrapping of the quantitative restriction (QR) on rice
would boost demand for lower-priced imports.
The latest projection of
the USDA-FAS for 2018, however, is lower by 100,000 metric tons (MT). The FAS
attributed this to the change in the National Food Authority’s (NFA)
importation policy.
“Philippine imports are
trimmed 100,000 MT to 1.7 MMT based on limitations set by the government on
import arrival times,” the USDA-FAS report read.
The USDA-FAS also slashed
its forecast for rice exports to the Philippines this year by 500,000 MT to 1.1
MMT. However, its latest forecast was still higher by 37.5 percent than last
year’s estimate of 800,000 MT.
“Philippine imports are cut
500,000 MT to 1.1 MMT based on government announcements that the minimum access
volume [MAV] imports will be allowed beginning in late-December,” the report
read.
Despite this, total milled
rice traded globally this year would remain at 44.557 MMT, according to the
USDA-FAS.
“Global trade is nearly
unchanged this month, as larger imports by Bangladesh and Nigeria nearly offset
reductions for the Philippines and Ghana,” it said.
In a separate report, the
USDA-FAS projected that Philippine milled-rice production next year would reach
11.20 MMT, 4.19 percent lower than the estimated 11.69-MMT output this year.
The USDA-FAS attributed the
decrease to the expected contraction in area planted with rice next year. Data
from the USDA-FAS showed that the country’s rice areas next year may shrink to
4.5 million hectares, from 4.72 million hectares this year.
Meanwhile, yield per
hectare is projected to maintain at 3.95 MT per hectare.
For this year, the NFA
Council (NFAC) revised the rules and regulations governing rice imports under
the MAV scheme, staggering the arrival of shipments into two periods. The NFAC
is the highest policy-making body of the NFA.
Under Memorandum Circular
AO-2017-08-002, rice imported by the private sector will arrive from December
20 until February 28, 2018, and from June 1, 2018 until August 31, 2018.
Rice traders and farmers’
groups can import 293,100 MT of rice from Thailand and Vietnam. They can also
import 50,000 MT of rice from China, India and Pakistan; 15,000 MT from
Australia; and 4,000 MT from El Salvador.
Based on the list uploaded
on the NFA’s web site, as of September 25, 297 private firms and cooperatives
are seeking to import 2.2 MMT of rice under the MAV scheme
https://businessmirror.com.ph/rice-imports-in-2018-to-hit-1-7-mmt-usda/
Sri Lanka returns to MRPs, confirms international orders to steer rice
supply
2017-10-14 00:00:50
Minister Bathiudeen (centre) addresses
the special press conference joined by the Secretary of Ministry of Industry
and Commerce Ranjan Asoka (right) and Chairman of Lanka Sathosa TMKB Tennakoon
(left)
Sri Lanka has confirmed the purchase of
500000 metric tons of rice from four global suppliers to face pressure from its
domestic markets distressed by paddy shortfall for three straight
seasons. Shipments from one country are already being offloaded at Colombo
Port. Sri Lanka is also returning back to its scrapped rice MRPs in the next
two weeks.
“As a result of these purchases, we have overcome any rice shortages and prices are back to low levels,” said Minister of industry and Commerce Rishad Bathiudeen, addressing a special press conference on rice supplies and other essential product prices at his ministry.
“The aim of the Cost of Living Committee (CoLC) of the government is to support our consumers with lowest prices. As a result of shortfall in the local paddy production for three seasons, we experienced rice shortages and higher prices in the local market,” said Minister Bathiudeen, and added: “Based on estimates of rice supply shortages in the coming months, CoLC ordered 500,000 MT rice to be imported from abroad. As a result my officials at the Ministry of Industry and Commerce ordered rice 500,000 MT rice from Myanmar, Pakistan, Thailand and India. The 100,000 MT “raw rice” (Nadu) ordered from India has already started arriving; 8890 MT of it is now being offloaded at Colombo Port. This is a government to foreign private sector order.
“The rest –the 400,000 MT from other three countries are government-to-government purchases and includes other varieties of rice as well. As a result of these purchases, we have overcome any rice shortages and prices are back to low levels. The Cooperative Wholesale Establishment (CWE) under my Ministry is receiving these government imported rice stocks and releases them to Lanka Sathosa under this Ministry to be sold at low prices to the consumers. I am pleased to say that today Lanka Sathosa has the lowest rice prices in the market compared to other local supermarkets. White raw (sudu kekulu) at Rs 65 per kilo, white raw samba Rs 90, samba Rs 84, and Nadu Rs 74.
“Recently we removed the maximum retail
prices imposed on rice due to requests from private sector to stabilise market
prices and to stop mixing of local and imported rice but the MRP removal was not
successful. Therefore we are planning to bring back max retail prices, perhaps
as early as the end of this month.
“Lanka Sathosa has also very low prices on other essential items-white sugar Rs 107, red lentils Rs 152, spratts Rs 99, B onions Rs 134, potatoes Rs 125, and gram 425 salmon at Rs 129, and coconuts at 65. Lanka Sathosa is also planning to give special discounted promotions to 500 products in the coming season. There will be many brand promotions too. We will be opening 50 new branches in the next two months. We are also in discussions with the Ministry of Public Administration and Home Affairs to open mini-sized Lanka Sathosas in conjunction with their 332 Divisional Secretariats (Pradeshiya Lekam offices) so that the Lanka Sathosa network becomes even more accessible.” As a support measure to private sector importers, the Consumer Affairs Authority under Minister Bathiudeen temporarily removed all MRPs imposed on rice in August 2017 (Order no 45, Gazette No 2032/25), to which the Minister shall revert to, likely with new and lower rice prices.
http://www.dailymirror.lk/article/Sri-Lanka-returns-to-MRPs-confirms-international-orders-to-ste
Vietnam’s rice prices up on low supply
Low supplies boosted rice prices in Vietnam
this week amid prospects of fresh purchase interest from the Philippines, while
deals with Bangladesh remained the sole bright spot for the otherwise subdued
demand in top Asian exporters. Traders in Vietnam quoted the benchmark
5-percent broken rice at $390-395 a tonne, free-on-board (FOB) Saigon, up from
the $385-$390 last week. "Supply is low after the summer-autumn crop was
completely harvested, bringing prices up. Some sellers held back grains in an
attempt to make larger profits," a trader in Ho Chi Minh city said.
"As for trading, Philippines will
import rice from Vietnam, Thailand and other countries under the MAV (Minimum
Access Volume) 2017. I think they'll buy around 290,000 tonnes from Vietnam,
same as last year." However, another trader said no deals have been
finalised. The Philippines opened the rice import scheme, Minimum Access Volume
2017, in August to private traders in Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan and India,
the National Food Authority (NFA) said on its website. As of late September,
importers in the Philippines have applied to buy over 2.2 million tonnes,
mostly from Thailand and Vietnam, according to the NFA document. Meanwhile,
Bangladesh, which has emerged as a major importer this year after floods
damaged its crops and sent domestic rates soaring, has finalised deals to
import 250,000 tonnes of parboiled rice from Thailand and India.
Bangladesh has also approved the purchase of
100,000 tonnes from Myanmar, setting aside a rift over an ongoing Rohingya
refugee crisis. In India, the 5 percent broken parboiled rice prices eased by
$2 per tonne to the $400-$403 level on expectations of a rise in supply.
"From the end of this month, supplies from the new season crop will
rise," said an exporter in Kakinada in the southern state of Andhra
Pradesh.
Meanwhile, Thailand's benchmark 5-percent
broken rice prices dropped to $380-$388 a tonne, FOB Bangkok, from the
$385-$390 range last week, traders said. "With the exception of
Bangladesh, there hasn't been much demand from other countries. We expect Bangladesh
to demand more rice until the end of the year," said a Bangkok-based
trader. Thai prices are likely to remain stable, traders said, even as the
market takes stock of the impact of recent floods in the country. "It is
still too soon to tell whether there will be damage to crops because most of
the rice has already been harvested," said Charoen Laothamatas, president
of the Thai Rice Exporters Association.
Rice to become more expensive due to ‘disastrous’ EU import
rules
The price of a curry will
rise from December due to “disastrous” new EU import
restrictions on rice, politicians have warned.
The EU Commission has ordered basmati
manufacturers to slash levels of the pesticide Tricyclazole to a hundredth of
its current legal level, despite being told it is impossible to do so
sustainably in less than three years. The compound has been used by Indian
farmers, who produce roughly 60 per cent of the world’s basmati, to protect
against rice blast disease for the last 30 years.
Current EU restrictions limiting traces to 1
mg/kg were already considered conservative compared to Japanese and US import
limits of 3 mg/kg.But in June the Commission ruled traces must be all but
eradicated from December. The Indian Government has said it would take
producers at least three harvests over three years to effectively modify their
crops, and that the abrupt change of rules will hand a monopoly to Pakistan,
where the pesticide is not used.You don’t need a PhD in business and economics
to realise that if you ban imports from a country that grows 60 per cent of the
world’s rice, the price will go upSyed Kamall MEP
Syed Kamall, Conservative MEP for London,
said: “This could have a disastrous effect on farmers’ livelihoods in India,
and at the same time we in Britain will end up paying more for our favourite
rice.” He added: “I am calling on the Commission to delay implementation of
this order to give the Indians time to make their crop comply, especially since
no-one is seriously claiming that Indian Basmati rice has suddenly become
unsafe to eat.
” A letter from India’s Ambassador in
Belgium, seen by The Sunday Telegraph, said the Commission took its decision on
the basis of a “precautionary principle” without knowing the carcinogenic
effect of Tricyclazole, a fungicide. He said: “Indian suppliers who have built
the Indian brands of basmati rice over four decades would be precluded from the
EU market based on the EU decision.” The EU currently imports around 360,000
tonnes of basmati rice a year, of which 150,000 tonnes comes to the UK. Around
80 per cent is brown, and 20 per cent white.The ruling threatens farmers'
livelihoods CREDIT: AFP
“You don’t need a PhD in business and
economics to realise that if you ban imports from a country that grows 60 per
cent of the world’s rice, the price will go up," said Dr Kamall. Basmati
is popular because of its versatility, aroma and ability to absorb flavours of
the dish it accompanies. The EU regulation states: “In view of the long shelf
life of rice, this Regulation should provide for a transitional arrangement for
rice grown in 2016 or before, in order to allow for the normal marketing,
processing and consumption of rice. “However taking into account the
uncertainties regarding certain properties of Tricyclazole, the timelines
foreseen in this Regulation do not allow for any treatment with Tricyclazole in
2017 or thereafter.”
Rice imports in 2018 to hit 1.7 MMT–USDA
Philippine rice imports next year could increase by more than half
to 1.7 million metric tons (MMT), from the 1.1 MMT projected for 2017,
according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The USDA
Foreign Agricultural Service (USDA-FAS) had earlier said that the scrapping of
the quantitative restriction (QR) on rice would boost demand for lower-priced
imports. The latest projection of the USDA-FAS for 2018, however, is lower by
100,000 metric tons (MT). The FAS attributed this to the change in the National
Food Authority’s (NFA) importation policy.
“Philippine imports are
trimmed 100,000 MT to 1.7 MMT based on limitations set by the government on
import arrival times,” the USDA-FAS report read. The USDA-FAS also slashed its
forecast for rice exports to the Philippines this year by 500,000 MT to 1.1
MMT. However, its latest forecast was still higher by 37.5 percent than last
year’s estimate of 800,000 MT. “Philippine imports are cut 500,000 MT to 1.1
MMT based on government announcements that the minimum access volume [MAV]
imports will be allowed beginning in late-December,” the report read. Despite
this, total milled rice traded globally this year would remain at 44.557 MMT,
according to the USDA-FAS. “Global trade is nearly unchanged this month, as
larger imports by Bangladesh and Nigeria nearly offset reductions for the
Philippines and Ghana,” it said. In a separate report, the USDA-FAS projected
that Philippine milled-rice production next year would reach 11.20 MMT, 4.19
percent lower than the estimated 11.69-MMT output this year. The USDA-FAS
attributed the decrease to the expected contraction in area planted with rice
next year.
Data from the USDA-FAS
showed that the country’s rice areas next year may shrink to 4.5 million
hectares, from 4.72 million hectares this year. Meanwhile, yield per hectare is
projected to maintain at 3.95 MT per hectare. For this year, the NFA Council
(NFAC) revised the rules and regulations governing rice imports under the MAV
scheme, staggering the arrival of shipments into two periods. The NFAC is the highest
policy-making body of the NFA. Under Memorandum Circular AO-2017-08-002, rice
imported by the private sector will arrive from December 20 until February 28,
2018, and from June 1, 2018 until August 31, 2018. Rice traders and farmers’
groups can import 293,100 MT of rice from Thailand and Vietnam.
They can also import 50,000
MT of rice from China, India and Pakistan; 15,000 MT from Australia; and 4,000
MT from El Salvador. Based on the list uploaded on the NFA’s web site, as of
September 25, 297 private firms and cooperatives are seeking to import 2.2 MMT
of rice under the MAV scheme.
PAU’s nitrogen use practice gets thumbs up at
Delhi meet
Tribune News Service
Ludhiana, October 15
The Indo-UK Nitrogen Virtual Joint
Centres have declared the Punjab Agricultural University-Leaf Colour Chart
(PAU-LCC) technology as the best nitrogen management practice to improve
nitrogen use efficiency. They have also recommended it, ensuring the supply of
the chart to all farmers in India.
Four scientists of the PAU, namely Dr
Parveen Chhuneja, Dr Varinderpal Singh, Dr Satinder Kaur and Dr Jayesh Singh,
represented the university at a meeting of the Indo-UK Nitrogen Virtual Joint
Centres, held at the National Agricultural Science Complex, New Delhi, from
October 3 to 5. The meeting aimed at discussing ‘Challenges and opportunities
in agricultural nitrogen science in India.’ This was followed by a meeting of
‘Cambridge India network for translational research in nitrogen (CINTRIN)’ in
Hyderabad from October 5 to 7. More than 90 researchers from 46 research
institutes across the globe discussed their works to improve the fertiliser
nitrogen use efficiency.
Dr Varinderpal Singh, senior soil
chemist, PAU, presented the university’s work and discussed PAU-Leaf Colour
Chart as a diagnostic tool to improve the efficiency and reduce escape of
nitrogen from soil plant system to atmosphere. He said originally, the
International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)-LCC was adopted by the PAU for
need-based fertiliser nitrogen management in rice, maize and wheat. However,
the colour strips of the IRRI-LCC could not precisely measure the leaf
greenness differences of less than 10 SPAD (Chlorophyll metre) units and thus,
restricted its wider application for need- based nitrogen management. The
Department of Soil Science, PAU, modified the IRRI-LCC and improved the
precision by introducing new colour strips (differing by 5 SPAD units) in
PAU-LCC, he said. Discussing the benefits of PAU-LCC, he said it could be used
for precision nitrogen management in rice, wheat, maize and basmati rice to
achieve potential yield.
Dr Varinderpal Singh further said farmers in Bassian village were happy
with the use of PAU-LCC in rice and had saved 50 to 75 kg urea per acre in
comparison to farmers’ practice of applying 150 kg urea per acre. http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/ludhiana/pau-s-nitrogen-use-practice-gets-thumbs-up-at-delhi-meet/482867.html
Posted By: Daryl WorthingtonPosted date: October 15,
2017in: Breaking
News
The
biggest history news stories of the last seven days, including a study claiming
Amazonians domesticated wild rice 4,000 years ago, new insights into the
history of the Rapa Nui, and an explanation of a Medieval jewellery
manufacturing process.Amazonians Domesticated Wild Rice 4,000 Years Ago
Amazonian farmers were manipulating wild rice to boost
food production more than 4,000 years ago, long before Europeans arrived in
South America, according to new research.A team of scientists from the UK and
Brazil have discovered the first evidence that ancient South American farmers
had domesticated wild rice to grow bigger crops with larger grains. The
researchers speculate that this knowledge may have been lost with the arrival
of Europeans and the decimation of the indigenous population in 1492.
Different species of rice were first grown around 11,000
years ago near the Yangtze River in China, and around 2,000 years ago in West
Africa. Led by the University of Exeter, the latest study has unearthed
evidence of successful rice farming on the vast wetlands of Guaporé River in
Rondônia state, Brazil
The study highlights the importance of the huge wetlands
of lowland South America in providing food for the ancient settlers of the
continent. Ancient inhabitants also managed to domesticate cassava, peanut and
chilli pepper crops for food.
By analysing 16 samples of microscopic plant remains from
ten different time periods, which were excavated by a team from the University
of São Paulo in South West Amazonia, it was determined that more phytoliths –
hard, microscopic pieces of silica made by plant cells, were found at higher
ground level. This suggests that rice began to play a bigger role in the diet
of the people who lived in the area over time, leading to increasing amounts
being farmed.
It was also revealed that the Amazon residents likely
became more efficient farmers over time. Changes in the ratio of husk, stem and
leaves at different ground levels suggest they brought more grain and fewer
leaves to the site.
Professor Jose Iriarte, from the University of Exeter,
who led the research, said: “This is the first study to identify when wild rice
first began to be grown for food in South America. We have found people were
growing crops with larger and larger seeds. Even though they were also eating
wild and domesticated plants including maize, palm fruits, soursop and squash,
wild rice was an important food, and people began to grow it at lake or river
edges.”
The results of the study have been published in the
journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.
New Light Shed on the Mysteries of Rapa Nui
The history of Rapa Nui, popularly known as Easter
Island, has long been shrouded in mystery. As well as the obvious fascination
with the monolithic stone heads that dominate the island, the history of the
Rapa Nui people prior to the arrival of Europeans is far from clear.
New palaeogenomic research carried out by a team of
scientists led by University College Santa Cruz has shed some new light on Rapa
Nui’s ancient history. The study has ruled out any intermixing between the
inhabitants of the incredibly remote island and other South Americans prior to
the arrival of Europeans in 1772.
The international team of scientists, led by Lars
Fehren-Schmitz, associate professor of anthropology at UC Santa Cruz, analysed
bone fragments from the remains of five individuals excavated in the 1980s.
Three of the individuals lived on the island prior to contact with Europeans,
and two after.
“We found no evidence of gene flow between the
inhabitants of Easter Island and South America,” said Fehren-Schmitz. “We were
really surprised we didn’t find anything. There’s a lot of evidence that seems
plausible, so we were convinced we would find direct evidence of pre-European
contact with South America, but it wasn’t there.”
Previous research found genetic traces of early
inhabitants of the Americas in present-day indigenous residents of Easter
Island. It was suggested that this was likely the result of intermixing that
occurred sometime between 1280 and 1425. Fehren-Schmitz is the first to use
paleaogenomic analysis to test that hypothesis, and the results suggest that
the contact must have happened after 1722.
“The most likely scenario is that there wasn’t a single
episode,” said Fehren-Schmitz. Acknowledging that his results answer one
question but leave many others unanswered, he said, “The story is simply more
complicated than we expected.”
The findings don’t solve one of the most enduring
mysteries of Rapa Nui, which is how a landmass 1,300 miles from the nearest
inhabited island and 2,200 miles from central Chile on the nearest continent of
South America came to be populated. Some archaeologists have suggested that sea
travel between Polynesia and the Americas was plausible, leading to the
intermingling of those populations and perhaps even the peopling of the Americas.
Fehren-Schmitz pointed out in a statement that plausibility isn’t proof.
“We want to do more work to determine more precisely when
this gene flow between Native Americans and the people of Rapa Nui occurred,
and where in the Americas it originated,” he said. “The population dynamics of
these regions are fascinating. We need to study the ancient populations of
other islands–if remains exist.”
New technological advances mean such insights could
eventually be gained, yielding new clues from materials long kept in museum
collections.
“Our methodologies have evolved so much in the last five
years that we might need to re-study samples we gave up on in the past to see
if we can get DNA out of them,” Fehren-Schmitz concluded.
Secrets of Medieval Jewellery Manufacture Revealed
Scientists have gained startling insights into the
techniques used to make gold jewellery in the Medieval period.
The techniques used by artisans to manufacture the
gold-coated silver threads found in textiles from the Middle Ages have long
perplexed historians, despite the wealth of examples in the form of artefacts
available to study. Four decades of intensive research have yielded limited
insights, comprehensive investigation of the materials restricted by their
small size. A single metal thread is sometimes no thicker than a human hair,
while its gold coating is only a hundredth of that.
Scientists from the American Chemical Society set out to
fill in the knowledge gap. Tamás G. Weiszburg, Katalin Gherdán and colleagues
examined medieval gilded silver threads, and silver and gold strips produced
during and after the Middle Ages, from a variety of European cultures.
Using high-resolution scanning electron microscopy,
electron back-scattered diffraction with energy-dispersive electron probe
microanalysis and other analytical methods, the scientists were able to gather
remarkable new insights. Their results suggest that the threads were gilded
exclusively by using an ancient method that survived for a millennium. The
goldsmiths simply heated and hammered the silver sheets and the gold foil
together, and then cut them into strips.
The results show that this process was used in the
thirteenth century, and was still widely practiced well into the seventeenth
century.
These
new insights, which are revealed in a study published in the journal Analytical
Chemistry, could help scientists restore, preserve and date medieval
artefacts.
https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/methane-good-news-178697
Meeting with Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi; journey to the Himalayas;
next visit: Iran
Published October 14, 2017, 10:00 PM
Jose C. De Venecia Jr.
By
Jose C. De Venecia Jr.
We
were travelling most of last month to Myanmar (which we, the older ones, still
remember as Burma), to the Kingdom of Bhutan, high on the Himalayas; Dubai, the
small bustling air travel and trading center of the United Arab Emirates, home
to hundreds of thousands of Filipino overseas workers; and on to Iran, which
everyone knows as the seat of the old Persian Empire, and which today is one of
the leading petroleum powers, with Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the US.From
Yangon, the old capital, my wife Gina and I travelled to the geographic center
of the nation, Naypyidaw, the newly proclaimed capital. We were fortunate that
in spite of the raging Rohingya crisis, where today some 500,000 Muslims, who
had been living in Myanmar for decades were fleeing the endangered region to
their ancestral Bangladesh, to escape persecution from the Myanmar military,
Aung San Suu Kyi found time to receive us.
We conferred with Myanmar’s
constitutional senior government leader, an intelligent no-nonsense lady, a
Nobel Peace Prize winner, and much admired all over the world. In the last
national elections, Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, National League for Democracy
(NLD), won overwhelming majority of the seats in parliament, in spite of many
years under house arrest, but she could not be president under the terms of a
military-influenced technicality in the Constitution because her late husband
was British. As the senior leader in the Cabinet and largely running the
country, she nominated the incumbent president and most cabinet posts, but the
powerful ministries, defense, and security, are still held by the generals.
Accompanied by our old friends,
Philippine Ambassador to Myanmar Eduardo Kapunan, Jr. and wife Elsa, we asked
Aung San Suu Kyi, (who received us three years ago at her residence in Yangon,
in the course of an Asian parties conference), to nominate her party’s senior
representatives to join the boards of our International Conference of Asian
Political Parties (ICAPP), based in Seoul, now composed of more than 340
ruling, opposition, and independent political parties in Asia, and the
International Association of Parliamentarians for Peace (IAPP), based in New
York, to which she enthusiastically agreed. This week we are sending her
ICAPP’s and IAPP’s written invitations so she and her party would present their
nominees.
With Ambassador Kapunan, we also
raised the possibility of the Philippines acquiring perhaps 25,000 to 50,000
hectares of potential rice fields in Myanmar for a possible
government-to-government joint venture or an agreement among the Philippine
private sector in partnership with Myanmar, hopefully with the bulk of rice
production, following anticipated successful rice growing and shipment to the
Philippines. The Philippines has been importing rice from Thailand and Vietnam
in large volumes, as far we can remember, even when we were first assigned to
Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) as minister – Economic counselor there in
1966-1969 when we were 30, at the height of the Vietnam War. Today Vietnam is
one of the world’s major rice exporters, is industrializing and doing well.
Our friend Aung San Suu Kyi
expressed much interest in the potential of Myanmar – Philippine economic
collaboration and she asked our ambassador to immediately confer with her
minister of agriculture. Upon return to Manila, we suggested to San Miguel
Corporation Chairman Eduardo Cojuangco, a confirmed, successful, large-scale
agriculturist, and San Miguel’s dynamic President Ramon Ang and other leading
agricultural-industrial groups to perhaps co-lead a Philippine private sector
effort in a consortium that could present a helpful solution to the Philippines’
perpetual rice crisis, with the current massive rice imports every year,
largely from Vietnam and Thailand.
The Philippines is fragmented
with 7,100 islands while Myanmar’s land is massive, contiguous, perhaps larger
than France and Ireland combined, and connected to Asia’s two largest
countries, China and India, the latter via Bangladesh. India, Pakistan,
Bangladesh, and Burma used to be ruled by the English Viceroy in British India.
President Rodrigo Duterte might consider asking our capable Agriculture
Secretary Piñol to look into this potential initiative in Myanmar.
We also asked the popular
ambassador and former Armed Forces reformist to raise the possibility of joint
Philippine-Myanmar exploration in Myanmar’s rich oil-producing petroleum
exploration concessions and explore establishment of an ASEAN-supported or
Filipino-led Export Processing Zone with a petrochemical complex, as part of a
combined agricultural – industrial initiative. We should be awaiting some
feedback.
On the Rohingya crisis, we
suggested the UN and ASEAN might propose an appreciable International Red Cross
deployment in the Rakhine region, which will help, not inflame the refugees,
and not alarm the Myanmar military.
From Myanmar, we flew back to
Bangkok as there is no direct flight in the journey to the Kingdom of Bhutan,
high on the mountain ranges, next door to Nepal. In the Himalayas, the Nepalese
king sometime back was forced to abdicate the throne and gave way to an elected
democratic civilian government, while the other Himalayan state Sikkim chose to
give up its sovereignty and join the State of India.
We have been to the Himalayas a
few times. In Kathmandu, capital of Nepal, the ruling Hindu Party and the
Marxist Communist Party have their representatives on our Board in ICAPP. In
Bhutan’s Himalayan mountains, we were hoping to check on the Chinese-Indian
military stand-off but by the time we reached the capital, the crisis had
calmed down, the forces in the highest hills had disengaged.
The well-loved Bhutanese King
Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck and the prime minister were out of town but we
had a delicious luncheon and good conversation with Bhutan’s Chief Justice
Dasho Tshering Wangchuck, Foreign Minister Damcho Dorji, acting Speaker of
Parliament Zigme Zangpo, and others, hosted by Bhutan’s former ambassador to
Thailand and Bangladesh Tsherung Dorji and his lady, who were introduced to us
by former Thai Minister Nalinee Taveesin, Gina’s friend, and our current ICAPP
representative at the first Asia-Europe Political Forum, which met recently in
Seoul, and which will now meet yearly among Asian and European political party
leaders.
(We collectively set the trend a
few years earlier with our bringing together Latin America’s and the
Caribbean’s political parties under their regional organization, COPPPAL, with
our ICAPP, followed by our successful encouragement of the founding of the
Council of African Political Parties (CAPP), based in Khartoum, which is now a
reality).
The Bhutanese leaders indicated
their people are not living in paradise but are happy with God and with the
world; their land has never been conquered; they live in a happy Kingdom, and
national success is not measured in Gross National Product (GNP) but in Gross
National Happiness (GNH). Our tourists should consider a visit there.
(Next week: our visit to Dubai
and Iran and our pioneering journey to Saudi Arabia and in the Persian Gulf in
the 1970’s which helped lead to the employment of millions of Filipinos in the
Arab world)
https://news.mb.com.ph/2017/10/14/meeting-with-myanmars-aung-san-suu-kyi-journey-to-the-himalayas-next-visit-iran/
Rice County Soil and Water
Conservation District supervisors attend training
·
·
Oct 13, 2017 Updated Oct 14, 2017
Supervisors from the Rice Soil and Water
Conservation District attend the Soil and Water Conservation District
Governance Conference Sept. 14-15 in Bloomington. Pictured, from left, are
LeAnn Buck, executive director of the Minnesota Association of Soil and Water
Conservation Districts, and Michael Ludwig and Timothy Little, Rice County SWCD
supervisors
http://www.southernminn.com/faribault_daily_news/news/article_90aec5a5-d3f5-5e6b-97a6-c7c9f4b12293.html
Rice
to become more expensive due to 'disastrous' EU import rules
Most
of the rice imported by the EU uses Tricyclazole CREDIT: ALAMY
·
14 OCTOBER 2017 • 10:00PM
The price of a curry will rise from December due to “disastrous”
new EU import restrictionson rice, politicians have warned.The
EU Commission has ordered basmati manufacturers to slash levels of the
pesticide Tricyclazole to a hundredth of its current legal level, despite being
told it is impossible to do so sustainably in less than three years.
The compound has been used by Indian farmers,
who produce roughly 60 per cent of the world’s basmati, to protect against rice
blast disease for the last 30 years.Current EU restrictions limiting traces to
1 mg/kg were already considered conservative compared to Japanese and US import
limits of 3 mg/kg.
But in June the Commission ruled traces must
be all but eradicated from December.
The Indian Government has said it would take
producers at least three harvests over three years to effectively modify their
crops, and that the abrupt change of rules will hand a monopoly to Pakistan,
where the pesticide is not used.
You
don’t need a PhD in business and economics to realise that if you ban imports
from a country that grows 60 per cent of the world’s rice, the price will go up
Syed Kamall, Conservative MEP for London, said: “This
could have a disastrous effect on farmers’ livelihoods in India, and at the
same time we in Britain will end up paying more for our favourite rice.”
He added: “I am calling on the Commission to
delay implementation of this order to give the Indians time to make their crop
comply, especially since no-one is seriously claiming that Indian Basmati rice
has suddenly become unsafe to eat.”
A letter from India’s Ambassador in Belgium,
seen by The Sunday Telegraph, said the Commission took its decision on the
basis of a “precautionary principle” without knowing the carcinogenic effect of
Tricyclazole, a fungicide.
He said: “Indian suppliers who have built the
Indian brands of basmati rice over four decades would be precluded from the EU
market based on the EU decision.”
The EU currently imports around 360,000 tonnes
of basmati rice a year, of which 150,000 tonnes comes to the UK.
Around 80 per cent is brown, and 20 per cent
white.
The ruling threatens
farmers' livelihoods CREDIT: AFP
“You don’t need a PhD in business and
economics to realise that if you ban imports from a country that grows 60 per
cent of the world’s rice, the price will go up," said Dr Kamall.
Basmati is popular because of its versatility, aroma and
ability to absorb flavours of the dish it accompanies.
The EU regulation states: “In view of the long
shelf life of rice, this Regulation should provide for a transitional
arrangement for rice grown in 2016 or before, in order to allow for the normal
marketing, processing and consumption of rice.
“However taking into account the uncertainties
regarding certain properties of Tricyclazole, the timelines foreseen in this
Regulation do not allow for any treatment with Tricyclazole in 2017 or
thereafter.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/14/rice-become-expensive-due-disastrous-eu-import-rules/
Sri Lanka returns to MRPs, confirms international orders to steer rice supply
2017-10-14 00:00:50
Minister Bathiudeen (centre) addresses the special press
conference joined by the Secretary of Ministry of Industry and Commerce Ranjan
Asoka (right) and Chairman of Lanka Sathosa TMKB Tennakoon (left)
has confirmed the purchase of 500000 metric tons of
rice from four global suppliers to face pressure from its domestic markets
distressed by paddy shortfall for three straight seasons.
Shipments from one country are already being offloaded at Colombo Port. Sri Lanka is also returning back to its scrapped rice MRPs in the next two weeks.
“As a result of these purchases, we have overcome any rice shortages and prices are back to low levels,” said Minister of industry and Commerce Rishad Bathiudeen, addressing a special press conference on rice supplies and other essential product prices at his ministry.
“The aim of the Cost of Living Committee (CoLC) of the government is to support our consumers with lowest prices. As a result of shortfall in the local paddy production for three seasons, we experienced rice shortages and higher prices in the local market,” said Minister Bathiudeen, and added: “Based on estimates of rice supply shortages in the coming months, CoLC ordered 500,000 MT rice to be imported from abroad. As a result my officials at the Ministry of Industry and Commerce ordered rice 500,000 MT rice from Myanmar, Pakistan, Thailand and India. The 100,000 MT “raw rice” (Nadu) ordered from India has already started arriving; 8890 MT of it is now being offloaded at Colombo Port. This is a government to foreign private sector order.
“The rest –the 400,000 MT from other three countries are government-to-government purchases and includes other varieties of rice as well. As a result of these purchases, we have overcome any rice shortages and prices are back to low levels. The Cooperative Wholesale Establishment (CWE) under my Ministry is receiving these government imported rice stocks and releases them to LankaSathosa under this Ministry to be sold at low prices to the consumers.
I am pleased to say that today Lanka Sathosa has the lowest rice prices in the market compared to other local supermarkets. White raw (sudu kekulu) at Rs 65 per kilo, white raw samba Rs 90, samba Rs 84, and Nadu Rs 74.
“Recently we removed the maximum retail prices imposed on
rice due to requests from private sector to stabilise market prices and to stop
mixing of local and imported rice but the MRP removal was not successful.
Therefore we are planning to bring back max retail prices, perhaps as early as
the end of this month.
“Lanka Sathosa has also very low prices on other essential items-white sugar Rs 107, red lentils Rs 152, spratts Rs 99, B onions Rs 134, potatoes Rs 125, and gram 425 salmon at Rs 129, and coconuts at 65. Lanka Sathosa is also planning to give special discounted promotions to 500 products in the coming season. There will be many brand promotions too. We will be opening 50 new branches in the next two months. We are also in discussions with the Ministry of Public Administration and Home Affairs to open mini-sized Lanka Sathosas in conjunction with their 332 Divisional Secretariats (Pradeshiya Lekam offices) so that the Lanka Sathosa network becomes even more accessible.” As a support measure to private sector importers, the Consumer Affairs Authority under Minister Bathiudeen temporarily removed all MRPs imposed on rice in August 2017 (Order no 45, Gazette No 2032/25), to which the Minister shall revert to, likely with new and lower rice prices
http://www.dailymirror.lk/article/Sri-Lanka-returns-to-MRPs-confirms-international-orders-to-steer-rice-supply--138447.html
Top stories: A deadly plague epidemic, the
evolution of skin color, and thrice-domesticated rice
Giorgia Guglielmi
Deadly plague epidemic rages in Madagascar
An epidemic of the deadliest form of plague, pneumonic, has
hit major cities and towns in Madagascar and is spreading fast. As of 7
October, the Madagascar Health Ministry reported that 343 people had been
infected and 42 died, and numbers are rising rapidly. A massive response is
underway, and the World Health Organization is on high alert. This poor island
nation is regularly hit by plague outbreaks, but they are typically the
relatively less dangerous bubonic form, transmitted from rats to humans by
fleas, and occur largely in remote areas. New gene variants reveal the evolution of human skin color
Most people associate Africans with dark skin. But different
groups of people in Africa have almost every skin color on the planet, from
deepest black in the Dinka of South Sudan to beige in the San of South Africa.
Now, researchers have traced the evolution of a handful of new gene variants
responsible for this palette of tones. While the dark skin of some Pacific
Islanders can be traced to Africa, gene variants from Eurasia also seem to have
made their way back to Africa. And surprisingly, some of the mutations
responsible for lighter skin in Europeans turn out to have an ancient African
origin.
Watch the human genome fold itself in four dimensions
Each human cell nucleus is packed with 2 meters of DNA
wrapped around 46 chromosomes like a jumble of spaghetti. These “noodles” are
in constant motion as they adjust to what the cell needs to do, and these
adjustments bring certain genes into contact so they can work together. Now,
researchers have visualized this dance at 20-minute intervals, so that they get
a 4D rendering: They can see how this 3D structure changes over time. In doing
so they have demonstrated how one protein helps orchestrate these movements.
Astronomers say they’ve found many of the universe’s
missing atoms
If you get frustrated when you can’t find your keys,
imagine how astronomers feel: For years, they’ve been unable to locate roughly
half the atoms they think the universe must contain. Now, researchers have
tracked down a lot of that missing matter using radiation from the early
universe that acts like a laser illuminating billowing smoke. The finding helps
understand how the universe has evolved over time.
Rice so nice it was domesticated thrice
Rice is unique among wild plants for having been
domesticated independently on three continents: Asia, Africa, and now South
America, researchers have discovered. The New World variety, tamed about 4000
years ago to produce larger grains, apparently was abandoned after Europeans
arrived. But its genetic legacy could potentially help improve Oryza sativa,
the Asian rice species that is now a dietary staple for half the world’s
population.
Scientists uncover source of Old Faithful’s hot water
supply
If only humanmade plumbing were as reliable as Old Faithful’s.
Every 90 minutes or so, Yellowstone National Park’s iconic geyser spews water
and steam 40 meters high, on a schedule so precise that tourists know when to
gather to watch the show. Now, by listening for seismic waves from the water
and steam percolating through the ground near Old Faithful, geophysicists have
caught a glimpse of the subsurface reservoir that supplies the clockwork
gusher.
http://gearsofbiz.com/top-stories-a-deadly-plague-epidemic-the-evolution-of-skin-color-and-thrice-domesticated-rice/122952
Zanzibar
Ministry of Agriculture to reduce rice
importation
ARUSHA Tanzania (Xinhua) --
Tanzania’s semi-autonomous Zanzibar archipelago will soon reduce importation of
rice following increasing production of the commodity in recent years, a senior
official said on Thursday.
Hamad Rashid Mohamed, Zanzibar’s
Minister of Agriculture, Natural Resources, Livestock, and Fisheries said that
rice production has increased from 33,655 tonnes in 2013 to 39,000 tonnes, this
year.
“To us, this is a very good move
and soon we will reduce the amount of rice we have been importing annually,”
the minister said in an interview.“One of our aims is to ensure an increase in
local rice production, at the moment we import 80 percent of total rice
consumed as it is the staple food of the island.”
He explained: “Zanzibar has a
good climatic condition that favors rice production, so we’re now focusing on
irrigation as a means to increase rice production.”Mohamed cited adoption of
the system of rice intensification (SRI) as the secrete behind the increased
rice production in the archipelago made up of Unguja and Pemba major islands
with 1.4 million people.
“There are more farmers who are
adopting the new rice farming techniques,” he said, adding that the aim is to
produce as more rice as possible; hence stop from importing the cereal crop.
He described SRI as a redeemer to
many farmers in the Indian Ocean Island as it can produce more than 10 tonnes
of rice per hector.
According to him, the new drive
will make the Islands has enough internal production that can sustain home
consumption and meet foreign exchange earnings that can guarantee
diversification of the economy.
The minister urged farmers to
heavily venture into rice farming because of the readily market from the
overgrowing population and the booming tourism sector in Zanzibar, which
consists of several islands lying off the coast of East Africa in the Indian
Ocean.
Located 32 kilometres east of the Tanzanian mainland, and
six degrees south of the equator, Zanzibar was once, for the Arabic and
sub-continent traders, the gateway to Africa, and, with its capital located in
the Zanzibar’s stone town which possessing the world heritage site.
http://www.coastweek.com/4041-Zanzibar-Ministry-of-Agriculture-to-reduce-rice-importation.htm
LT Foods sets up USD 5 mn plant in US for
ready-to-heat rice
PTI | Oct 15, 2017,
10:57 IST
New
Delhi, Oct 15 () Leading basmati rice company LT Foods has set up a plant in the US for
ready-to-heat organic rice with an investment of USD 5 million as it seeks to
tap the huge market for this product in America.
The
company is aiming to generate revenue of over USD 20 million in next five year
from this product to be sold under organic food brand 'EcoLife', its CEO &
MD Ashwani Arora said.
"We
have set up a plant in the US to produce ready-to- heat organic rice. Trial run
is happening and production will start from December. The total market size is
USD 265 million in the US and growing at 14 per cent," Arora told .
This
plant, the company's fourth facility outside India, will produce 20 million
pouches of ready to heat organic rice initially and expand to 70 million
pouches by 2018.
On
investment, he said the initial capital investment on the plant is USD 5
million and the company expects to generate revenue of USD 21 million in next 5
years.
"We
already have a strong presence in the US through our Basmati rice brand 'Royal'
and we will be leveraging our strong presence and experience to grow our US
market even further," Arora said.
LT
Foods basmati rice brand 'Royal' is largest brand in the US with a market share
of more than 40 per cent, he added.
The
company, which posted a turnover of about Rs 3,300 crore during last fiscal, is
continuously diversifying its product portfolio.
Besides,
selling basmati rice under many brands, including 'Daawat', LT Foods has been
focusing on organic food and rice snacks.
"Keeping
a pulse on changing consumer trend to innovate and bring out products that is
relevant to the change is one of the core strengths of LT Foods," Arora
said.
"Changing
consumer lifestyles, including longer working hours and multi-schedule household,
is leading to unstructured meal times. Convenient, ready to heat rice options
appeal to millennials," he said.
LT
Foods' US plant will import all required ingredient from India, including
basmati rice.
"The
US is a big market for the company as it contributes Rs 1,000 crore to overall
turnover," Arora said.
Earlier
this month, LT Foods announced foray into healthy snacks market and will invest
USD 5 million (about 32 crore) on launch of rice-based snack products.
The company has partnered Japans Kameda Seika to launch premium
rice based snacks brand Kari Kari in India. MJH BAL ABM
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/lt-foods-sets-up-usd-5-mn-plant-in-us-for-ready-to-heat-rice/articleshow/61087711.cms
Manipulations in rice and veg market
10:59, Oct 14, 2017
With the price of rice
skyrocketing, life has become hard for the poor. Despite a lot of talk and
initiative, the government rice reserves remain inadequate. This has had a
negative impact on the market. Rice is being imported by both the government
and private sectors, but prices refuse to go down.
Vegetable are also extremely
costly with the price of eggplant doubling within a week to Tk 80 per kg.
Cucumbers are Tk 90 per kg, string beans Tk 80, and bitter gourd (korolla) Tk
70. Even green chillies have shot up to Tk 250 per kg. No vegetable sells less
than Tk 60 per kg in the market.
There are natural causes
behind the price hike. Floods in the haors (marshlands) and 32 districts of the
country caused extensive damage to the crops. The vegetable harvest has been
less too. The traders point to short supply in vegetables. Prices will go up if
demand is higher than supply, but that does not mean nothing should be done
about it.
The government has no idea
how much rice is in private stocks, but the rice mill owners and rice traders
are well aware that the government stock is low. There should be a probe into
the private stocks of rice to ensure that prices are not being deliberately
pushed by hoarders.
The price hike in rice is
because of the fall in government food reserves, the crops being destroyed by
the floods, and the unclear idea about how much rice is in the stock of the
millers and traders. It is imperative that the government accelerate the import
process and also speed up the rice procurement drive at a local level. This
will certainly have a positive impact on the market.
The prices of vegetables may
be high, but the farmers are not happy. They are not receiving payment anywhere
near what the consumers are having to pay. It is the middlemen syndicate that
is making the money as well the extortionists who collect ‘toll’ during the
transportation of the produce. This increases the price of vegetables and food
grain excessively and this must be stopped
http://en.prothom-alo.com/opinion/news/163005/Manipulations-in-rice-and-veg-market
