Tuesday, July 30, 2019

30 July,2019 Daily Global Regional Local Rice E-Newsletter

Something is wrong with our food exports

Mohiuddin AazimUpdated July 29, 2019
Description: https://i.dawn.com/primary/2019/07/5d3e34c46ddfb.jpg
Pakistan’s food exports were around $4.25 billion in 2011-12.
Seven years later, food exports fetched about $4.61bn — an increase of only $360 million or 8.5 per cent.
Food exports came down 4pc to $4.61bn in 2018-19 from $4.8pc in 2017-18.
Exporting larger volumes of rice, wheat and sugar stokes domestic inflation, sometimes making these items too expensive for the poorer sections of the population
What is more worrying is that food exports have oscillated between $3.7bn and $4.8bn during the past seven years. We never reached the magical mark of $5bn. In food exports, rice is the top earner. Rice export earnings reached the magical mark of $2bn back in 2011-12, but have remained close to that level since then. Something is wrong somewhere.
Taking food exports to $6bn and sustaining that level should not be as difficult as years of misaligned priorities and a lack of pragmatic thinking have made it. Similarly, boosting rice export earnings to $2.5bn-$3bn is not too difficult. All our federal and provincial governments need to do is establish a lasting working relationship and take some much-needed practical and inclusive measures. Both things are missing.
Under the PTI government, the working relationship between the federal and provincial governments has rather deteriorated. As a result, economic decision-making as a whole is suffering. Agriculture and food exports are no exception. Our resources-starved economy is passing through a crucial phase even otherwise. It would be too naïve to hope that things would improve dramatically in the near future.
But one must hope better sense would prevail, the government would align economic decision-making with ground realities and do whatever is needed to boost exports i.e. pushing up food exports would become a priority and measures to ensure sustainable growth in food exports would be initiated.
The first thing to boost food exports is ensuring that it is done while keeping the domestic food security in mind. The second thing is about expanding food export items and moving towards more value addition. The third thing is about increasing our outreach to global markets. With a population growth rate of about 2pc, our domestic food requirements are growing fast. Our inability to expand the cultivable landmass and a perennial shortage of water limit our capacity to grow rice.
That means we will have to increase the per-hectare yield of rice quickly if we want rice exports to grow every year at a decent rate. Besides, we also need to move speedily towards exportable branded rice and rice-based products. On both counts, improvements are taking place but at a snail’s pace.
One proof of this assessment is the fact that whenever we see rice export earnings growing, the rise is more because of an increase in export volumes and less because of a higher per-unit price. That will have to change. Back in 2011-12 when rice exports first hit the $2bn mark, the export volume totalled 3.63m tonnes.
Seven years later, we fetched the same amount after shipping abroad 4.1m tonnes of the commodity. The argument that a massive rupee depreciation during the last fiscal year squeezed dollar earnings cannot conceal our inefficiencies. Haven’t we witnessed this phenomenon of big volumes of shipment fetching high dollar earnings during the years when the rupee was stable?
Wheat and sugar exports also suffer because of this phenomenon, bringing to the fore the need for producing high-yielding food crops and value addition in raw food exports.
Earning more dollars by exporting larger volumes of rice, wheat and sugar also stokes domestic inflation, sometimes making these items too expensive for the poorer sections of the population. From the point of view of inflation management, there is a need to go for constant food export brandings and production of more value-added food products.
Despite the introduction of modern ways of vegetable and fruit farming in some parts of Punjab and in Sindh, their combined export earnings remain below $700m. We earned less than $700m in 2018-19 by exporting no less than 768,000 tonnes of fruits and about 1.03m tonnes of vegetables.
Exporting larger volumes can, of course, push export earnings to $1bn in a year or two, but that would make already pricy fruits and vegetables even pricier. Exporting value-added by-products of fruits and vegetables with higher per-unit prices and exporting more of them to the neighbouring countries and Central Asian states are important. That will cut the cost of trade and help us keep local prices from skyrocketing.
Our annual export earnings of seafood and meat also remain below $700m. And the same is true for them. Despite repeated claims, our exports to China are not growing and a strained relationship with India continues to mar the prospects of exporting more to that country.
Currently, exports of oilseeds, nuts and spices fetch less than $100m each every year. And, despite enough production (6.3m tonnes in 2018-19), exports of maize and maize-based products remain negligible. With some efforts, export earnings in these categories can be increased substantially. Whereas oilseeds and nuts are exported to many countries, main markets of spices are the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom where millions of overseas Pakistanis live.
There is enough demand for Pakistani spices in Afghanistan. We export sizable volumes there during the years when Pak-Afghan relations are normal. Pakistan can increase its food exports, particularly those of livestock, meat, maize, nuts and spices, to the Central Asian states as well once the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor becomes fully operational, accelerating trading with these states.
Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, July 29th, 2019




Weekly Inflation Up 0.18 Percent

 (@ChaudhryMAli88)  
Description: Weekly inflation up 0.18 percent

The weekly inflation for the week ended on July 25, for the combined income group, witnessed an increase of 0.18 percent as compared to the previous week

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Jul, 2019 ) :The weekly inflation for the week ended on July 25, for the combined income group, witnessed an increase of 0.18 percent as compared to the previous week.
The Sensitive price Indicator (SPI) for the week under review in the combined group was recorded at 264.88 against 264.40 points registered in the previous week, according to the latest data of Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).
Meanwhile, the inflation for the lowest income group also increased from 243.85 points in last week to 244.42 points, showing growth of 0.23 percent.
As compared to the corresponding week of last year, the SPI for the combined group in the week under review witnessed an increase of 15.59 percent, and for the lowest income group, it increased by 12.76 percent.
The weekly SPI has been computed with base 2007-08=100, covering 17 urban centres and 53 essential items for all income groups and combined.
Meanwhile, the SPI for the income groups from Rs8001-12,000, Rs12,001-18,000; 18,001-35,000 and above Rs35000 per month increased by 0.
21 percent, 0.20 percent, 0.18 percent and 0.15 percent respectively.
During the week under review, average prices of 10 item registered decrease, while that of 19 items increased with the remaining 24 items' prices unchanged.
The item that witnessed decrease in their prices during the week under review included banans, chicken, LPG cylinder, wheat flour, eggs, masoor pulse, sugar, mustard oil, rice (Irri-6) and red chilly.
The items, which recorded increase in their average prices included tomatoes, potatoes, onions, vegetable ghee, gur, mash pulse, garlic, shirting, cooking oil, milk (fresh), milk (powdered), bath sopa, rice (Basmati broken), vegetable ghee, gram pulse, moong pulse, wheat, curd and mutton.
Similarly the items which recorded no change in their prices included bread, beef, salt, tea (packet), cooked beef, cooked daal, tea (prepared), cigarettes, long cloth, lawn, georgette, gents sandal, gents chappal, ladies sandal, electricity charges, gas charges, kerosene oil, firewood, electric bulb, washing soap, match box, petrol, diesel and telephone local call

Satake completes rice plant in the Philippines

Chen Yi Agventures rice plant in the Philippines. Photo courtesy of Satake.
07.29.2019
HIROSHIMA, JAPAN — Satake Corp. completed a rice processing plant for Chen Yi Agventures, Inc. in East Visayan region, Philippines.
Chen Yi’s rice processing complex built in Alangalang near Tacloban on Leyte Island is the largest rice milling facility in the region, with 10 30-tonne grain dryers and 7 tph processing lines. Satake received the order of the plant design and equipment for the whole processing line, based on its advanced technology and longtime contribution to the rice industry in the country.
Rice cultivation is a major industry on the island of Leyte. However, it has been struggling to improve the productivity mainly due to all the manual labor involved in rice cultivation, Satake said. As a result, farmers had lower incomes than the national average. In addition, Typhoon Haiyan in 2013 (locally named Yolanda in the Philippines) caused enormous damage, requiring massive reconstruction aid for the local community and economy.
In 2016, Patrick Renucci, a prominent French entrepreneur, and his Chinese-Filipino wife Rachel, also a successful entrepreneur in Hong Kong, organized Chen Yi Agventures to involve and support rice cultivation on Leyte Island.
The corporation holds up “Rice Revolution” as its goal; increase farmer’s income by improving rice production efficiency through mechanization, while producing high-quality rice. Furthermore, Chen Yi will be involved with all aspects of rice cultivation in the region by supplying rice seeds, providing technical guidance for cultivation, and even low-interest loans to farmers.
“To support Leyte farmers, we need fundamental reforms in rice cultivation,” Renucci said. “We will become the largest rice producer in the Visayas and Mindanao regions and increase production efficiently. Using Stake equipment and technology, Chen Yi Agventures’ rice processing complex is the most technologically advanced facility in South East Asia. This facility and mechanization of rice farming will reduce production costs and raise the quality of rice from this region. As the Philippines still imports rice, premium rice produced at the island of Leyte will be as competitive as the imported rice, which will result in not just a short-term aide to the community but also a long-term increase of farmers’ incomes by establishing a true sustainable agriculture.”

Tax collection from rice importers reach P6.5-B in mid-July

Published July 29, 2019 4:24pm 
The Bureau of Customs (BOC) collected nearly P6.5 billion in duties from rice imports made by private traders under the Rice Liberalization Act, the agency announced on Monday.
In a report to Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III, the BOC said it had collected a total of P6.479 billion from importer-traders as of July 15, with most of the revenue from rice import duties collected from the Port of Subic (P1.598 billion), followed by the Manila International Container Port (P1.033 billion), and the Port of Manila (P998.77 million).
An average of P1.4 billion a month had been collected since the Rice Liberalization Act, or Republic Act (RA) No. 11203, took effect last March.
The duties collected made up over half the P10-billion needed for the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF).
Ten percent of the fund would be used for loans, with minimal interest rates and with minimum collateral requirements, to rice farmers and cooperatives.
The rest of the RCEF would be set aside for farm machinery and equipment; rice seed development, propagation and promotion; and rice extension services, all of which was part of the effort to modernize the agriculture sector.
Meanwhile, the BOC pointed out that due to the liberalized rice trade, the average retail cost of the staple had fallen by at least P7 per kilo.
Additionally, the BOC added that from a high of 6.7 percent in September and October 2018, the Rice Liberalization law had contributed to last June's deceleration of the inflation rate to 2.7 percent, or the low-end of the state economic team’s target band of 2-4 percent for the year.
Another P3.103 billion was also earned in duties from import permits issued by the National Food Authority (NFA) since January this year. — Joviland Rita/DVM, GMA News

India's non-basmati rice export falls after govt withdraws tax incentive

 

Government's decision to increase MSP consistently had raised cost of procuring

Dilip Kumar Jha  |  Mumbai Last Updated at July 29, 2019 23:43 IST
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Description: Brown: (Kichadi Samba )  A variety native to Tamil Nadu, it has a relatively low GI of 50 and was preferred by royalty. The unrefined brown raw rice has all of its bran intact, and is more nutritious than parboiled rice.
Brown: (Kichadi Samba ) A variety native to Tamil Nadu, it has a relatively low GI of 50 and was preferred by royalty. The unrefined brown raw rice has all of its bran intact, and is more nutritious than parboiled rice.

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India’s exports of non-basmati rice declined by half between April and May this year after the government withdrew 5 per cent incentives from April 1.
Data compiled by the government-owned Agricultural & Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (Apeda) showed India’s overall exports at 711,837 tonnes for April-May 2019 compared to 1.53 million tonnes shipped for the corresponding period of the previous year. In value term, India’s overall non-basmati rice exports plunged by more than 50 per cent to $294 million (Rs 2046 crore) for the first two months of FY 2019-2020 as against $652 million (Rs 4347 crore) in the same period last year. 
The decline in non-basmati rice exports raises questions about India’s policy making, say analysts. In order to help farmers, the government has increased minimum support price (MSP) for the last several years. This has made Indian rice uncompetitive for exports. A 5 per cent tax cushion encouraged 7-8 million tonnes in exports of non-basmati rice annually.
“Some importing countries like Bangladesh have started growing rice on their own which reduced their overall annual import. Trade sources are also blaming continuous MSP increase for a reduction in India’s non-basmati rice exports,” said a senior Apeda official.
Bangladesh had emerged as the largest importer of India’s non-basmati rice with 1.87 million tonnes in 2017-18. In the following year, however, farmers in Bangladesh expanded their sowing area resulting into higher output from local sources and thus proportionate decline in their overall non-basmati rice import. Thus, in FY 2018-19, India’s non-basmati rice exports plunged by a drastic 70 per cent to Bangladesh to a mere 480,567 tonnes.
With favourable agro climatic condition continues this year as well, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported Bangladesh’s rice output to rise further 35.3 million tonnes this year as compared to 34.9 million tonnes and 32.6 million tonnes in 2018-19 and 2017-18 respectively.
Description: India's non-basmati rice export falls after govt withdraws tax incentive“Declining import from Bangladesh is self-explanatory as to why India’s non-basmati rice exports are falling,” said the Apeda official.
In fact, exporters are worried over sustained rise in the MSP of paddy which translates into the proportionate increase in rice prices. To attract farmers, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has raised MSP of common variety of paddy by 30 per cent in the last four years from Rs 1410 a quintal in 2015-16 to Rs 1815 a quintal in 2019-20.
“The sustained hike in MSP has made India outpriced by $25 in the world market resulting into lower demand of Indian rice. Other rice growing countries including Pakistan and Thailand have filled the gap,” said Gurnam Arora, Joint Managing Director, Kohinoor Foods, one of the largest exporters of basmati and non-basmati rice in India.
With no relief in sight, India’s non-basmati rice exports are likely to fall steeply in coming months.
Meanwhile, bumper local production and possibility of less export are expected to worsen challenges for storage and handling of rice in India.
India’s total rice output is estimated at 115.6 million tonnes for 2018-19 as compared to 96.48 million tonnes reported in the previous year. India’s annual rice consumption is estimated at around 90 million tonnes.

Customs collects P6.48-B taxes from rice imports

JULY 30, 2019
CUSTOMS COLLECTS P6.48-B TAXES FROM RICE IMPORTS
Description: Customs collects P6.48-B taxes from rice imports 1rice imported
THE government has collected as of mid-July more than P6 billion in duties from rice imported by private traders since Republic Act 11203 or the Rice Tariffication Act took effect in March, the Department of Finance (DoF) reported on Monday.
In a statement, the Finance department quoted the Bureau of Customs (BoC) as saying in a report to Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez 3rd that preliminary data showed that it had collected P6.479 billion from importer-traders as of July 15.
With the tax collected to date, the DoF is optmitistic that the Customs bureau “remains on course to collect the minimum of P10 billion needed for the RCEF per year,” referring to the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund.
RA 11203 set up the RCEF to finance the modernization of the agriculture sector, and provide farmers with access to credit and training, as well as funds for mechanization, high-quality seeds and fertilizers, among others.
The Finance department said BoC collections from these imports since the enactment of the law would benefit palay (unhusked rice) growers, as such revenues were earmarked for the annual P10-billion RCEF.
Section 13 (c) of RA 11203 says 10 percent of the RCEF shall be made available as credit facility, with minimal interest rates and with minimum collateral requirements to rice farmers and cooperatives.
The rest of the fund would be set aside for farm machinery and equipment; rice seed development, propagation and promotion; and rice extension services, as provided under the Rice Tariffication Act.
On top of paying tariffs, rice importers are required to secure sanitary and phytosanitary import clearances from the Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Plant Industry, which assumed the food-safety regulation function of the National Food Authority under the law.
“This requirement will ensure that rice imports are free from pests and diseases that could affect public health and local farm production,” the DoF said.

DA open to suspending rice imports

Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:12 AM July 30, 2019
The Department of Agriculture (DA) is ready to heed the call of President Duterte to stop the importation of rice during the country’s harvest season to protect the farmers, but the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) is not too keen on the proposal.
On the sidelines of SL Agritech’s Masagang Ani 300 launch in Quezon City on Monday, Agriculture Undersecretary for Operations Ariel Cayanan said the agency would find ways to follow the instruction of the President despite the recent deregulation of rice trade, adding that the move would bode well for local rice producers who are suffering from falling palay prices.
“Knowing the President, as a lawyer, he knows that what he’s saying has a legal basis so we’re going to find ways to make it happen … That is the order of the President so what are we going to do?” he said.
“The proposal’s intention is good. It wants to protect the farmers and so are you not going to support a move like that?” he added.
President Duterte said during the inauguration of a bypass road in Ilocos Sur last week that suspending the importation was a “happy compromise” between farmers and consumers to boost farmer income and ensure rice supply.
As of the second week of July, the average buying price of palay was at P17.87 a kilogram, down 17.31 percent from year-ago rates. The lowest recorded price was in Cavite, where a kilo of palay was sold at P12.85 a kilo or almost the same as the average cost of producing rice at P12 a kilo.
However, Socioeconomic Planning Assistant Secretary Mercedita Sombilla said in an interview with Inquirer that restricting the importation of rice during harvest “goes against the spirit of the law,” adding that the new policy has yet to be fully implemented to resort to “something so drastic.”

OC denies undervaluation of rice imports

 July 29, 2019 7:03pm 
The Bureau of Customs (BOC) on Monday denied the allegation that rice importations are undervalued, saying that it follows an international recognized system for valuation.
Earlier, the Federation of Free Farmers (FFF) said there was an "apparent undervaluation" of rice imports following the enactment of the Rice Tariffication Law in March. 
In statement on July 8, the farmers' group said that the Department of Finance's report on July 4 that the BOC collected P5.9 billion in tariffs from 1.43 million metric tons of imported rice in the four months since March means that, by its calculations, importers paid P4.24 billion less than what they were supposed to pay.
"If we use the DOF figures and assume a Php52 per dollar exchange rate, it will come out that the average landed price of the rice imports before imposing tariffs was US$227 per metric ton. On the other hand, data from international monitoring groups such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) indicate that the real landed cost of these imports should have been around US$391 per ton if these were 25% broken rice. In effect, importers appear to have undervalued their shipments by 42% and paid Php 4.24 billion less than what was due from them," FFF national manager Raul Montemayor said.
The FFF also said that importers can reduce their tariff obligations by "lowering the declared value of their imports in connivance with their suppliers abroad."
In its own statement on Monday, the BOC denied the FFF's allegations.
The bureau said that its Import Assessment Service (IAS) provides reference values on rice imports as a guide "when the veracity of the declared values is disputable."
"All Ports abide with the said published data except when the Commercial Invoice of a rice shipment is supported by genuine and validated Proof of Payment such as Bank Telegraphic transfer of Payment, Sales Contract and other similar legitimate instrumentalities that indicated actual sales transaction between the seller and the buyer," it said.
This system, said the BOC, follows the World Trade Organization's "internationally recognized system of valuation," of which the Philippines is a signatory and which "is likewise prescribed under Section 701 of the Customs Modernization and Tariff Act (CMTA)."
The Rice Tariffication Act removes the quantitative restrictions on rice while imposing a 35-percent tariff on imports from the country's neighbors in Southeast Asia. — Joviland Rita/BM, GMA News

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Innovation rush aims to help farmers, rich and poor, beat climate change
THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION
  • JUL 30, 2019
LONDON - In decades to come, African farmers may pool their money to buy small robot vehicles to weed their fields or drones that can hover to squirt a few drops of pesticide only where needed.
Smartphones already allow farmers in remote areas to snap photos of sick plants, upload them and get a quick diagnosis, plus advice on treatment.
Researchers also are trying to train crops like maize and wheat to produce their own nitrogen fertilizer from the air — a trick soybeans and other legumes use — and exploring how to make wheat and rice better at photosynthesis in very hot conditions.
As warmer, wilder weather linked to climate change brings growing challenges for farmers across the globe — and as they try to curb their own heat-trapping emissions — a rush of innovation aimed at helping both rich and poor farmers is now converging in ways that could benefit them all, scientists say.
In a hotter world, farmers share “the same problems, the same issues,” said Svend Christensen, head of plant and environmental sciences at the University of Copenhagen.
Agricultural researchers, who have teamed up to boost harvests and fight the major blight of wheat rust are now forming an international consortium in a bid to make wheat stand up to worsening heat and drought.
“There was a real shift in terms of the intensity of what we do together when we became aware of climate change,” said Hans-Joachim Braun, who heads the global wheat program for the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center based in Mexico.
For each 1 degree Celsius global temperatures rise above pre-industrial times, wheat harvests drop 5 to 8 percent, he said.
That means the world will likely see a 10 percent drop in harvests even if governments hold global warming to “well below” 2 C, as they have agreed, he said — and that drop would come even as the world’s population grows and demand for food rises.
Finding ways to breed wheat that can cope better with heat could help farmers from Australia to India and China, as well as the people who depend on their grain, he said.
“It doesn’t matter where you use this trait — it will have an impact,” Braun said.
One idea scientists are working on is to fundamentally reshape how crops such as wheat and rice carry out photosynthesis, to make them better able to continue producing in hot weather, especially if less water is available.
The process — like efforts to help wheat and maize start making their own fertilizer — is hugely complex and will likely require decades of work, scientists say.
“It would be a mega-breakthrough. Many people think it’s dreaming a little bit because it’s so difficult,” said Bruce Campbell, director of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS).
But early tests to improve photosynthesis in tobacco have shown a 40 percent boost in production — and the technique is now being tested with crops from cassava to maize, said Kathy Kahn, a crop research expert with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Nick Austin, who directs agricultural development for the foundation, said such changes “are going to benefit the poor and rich worlds together” — and could play a key role in keeping food prices affordable.
“These technologies … are going to be globally relevant,” he predicted.
Other efforts to help farmers — including the poorest — adapt to climate pressures have already taken root, Khan said.
Flood-tolerant rice that can withstand being submerged under water, for instance, is now being used by 6 million farmers in Asia to cope with more extreme weather, she said.
But Christensen, of the University of Copenhagen, thinks even more high-tech innovations — from weeding robots to drones — are likely to reach poorer farmers too.
With Africa expected to see rapid population growth and movement to cities in coming decades, its farmers will need to become more efficient at producing larger amounts of food, he said.
“If you want to increase efficiency, you need to use machinery to do some of the hard work,” he added.
He believes prices for drones and robots will fall rapidly in years to come, just as they once did for mobile phones.
“Maybe you will share this machinery with your neighbor,” Christensen said. “A village of smallholder farmers could think of buying one for all their fields.”
As consumers and companies demand to know more about the origin of what they buy, farmers in poorer nations could also adopt systems from blockchain to microchips tucked into cauliflower to help with tracking, said CCAFS principal scientist Philip Thornton.
Thornton is working on a “Wild Futures” report, due out later this year, that will dig into potential high-tech advances and predict how the food system might look in 15 to 20 years’ time, given the pace of technological change, he said.
There is still “quite a lot of uncertainty” about how much high-tech innovation will reach poorer small-scale farmers and especially around how quickly that could happen, he added.
But CCAFS director Campbell predicted there would be “many innovations, and the innovations are highly likely to be picked up elsewhere” beyond their source.
Christensen said ideas also are increasingly flowing from poorer countries to richer ones, not just in the other direction, particularly because the poorest are in some cases dealing with the strongest climate impacts first.
“There’s a lot of inspiration from the people in developing countries,” he said

To feed its 1.4 billion, China bets big on genome editing of crops

In a lab chamber in Beijing, Gao Caixia grows CRISPR-modified wheat plants that she hopes will have a higher yield.
This story, the first in a series on CRISPR in China, was supported by the Pulitzer Center.
IN BEIJING AND DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA—If Gao Caixia were a farmer, she might be spread a little thin. Down the hall from her office at a branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) here in Beijing, seeds from a strain of unusually soft rice and a variety of wheat with especially fat grains and resistance to a common fungus sprout in a tissue culture room. A short stroll away, wild tomato plants far hardier than domestic varieties but bearing the same sweet fruit crowd a greenhouse, along with herbicide-resistant corn and potatoes that are slow to brown when cut. In other lab rooms Gao grows new varieties of lettuce, bananas, ryegrass, and strawberries.
But Gao isn’t a farmer, and that cornucopia isn’t meant for the table—not yet, anyway. She is a plant scientist working at the leading edge of crop improvement. Every one of those diverse crops has been a target for conventional plant breeders, who have slowly and painstakingly worked to endow them with traits to make them more productive, nutritious, or hardy. But Gao is improving them at startling speeds by using the genome editor CRISPR.
Gao is one face of the Chinese government’s bet that CRISPR can transform the country’s food supply. A natural bacterial immune system, CRISPR was turned into a powerful genome editor just a few years ago in U.S. and European labs. Yet today, China publishes twice as many CRISPR-related agricultural papers as the second-place country, the United States. The explanation? “Because I’m here,” jokes Gao, who punctuates much of her speech with robust, giddy, infectious laughter.
In August 2013, her group modified plant DNA with CRISPR, a first, and the 50-year-old researcher has since written three dozen publications that describe using the genome editor on various crops. Daniel Voytas, a plant geneticist at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul who invented an earlier genome-editing system and who has also adopted CRISPR, says Gao is an “outstanding cell biologist [who] jumped on CRISPR early on and has just been riding the crest of the wave.”
Description: https://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/styles/inline__450w__no_aspect/public/cc_5_STUDENTS-RICE_DSC_5253.jpg?itok=GNXas1Zr
Gao Caixia’s team grows CRISPR-modified rice strains in experimental paddies near its lab in Beijing.

STEFEN CHOW
But she is far from alone in China. Her team is one of 20 groups there seeking to use CRISPR to modify crop genes. “All the labs use CRISPR for basic research,” Gao says. “They cannot live without CRISPR.” China also expanded its efforts beyond its borders in 2017, when the state-owned company ChemChina bought Switzerland-based Syngenta—one of the world’s four largest agribusinesses, which has a large R&D team working with CRISPR—for $43 billion. That was the most China has ever spent on acquiring a foreign company, and it created an intimate relationship between government, industry, and academia—a “sort of a ménage à trois” that ultimately could funnel intellectual property from university labs into the company, says plant geneticist Zachary Lippman of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.
Chinese leaders “want to strategically invest in genome editing, and [by that] I mean, catch up,” says Zhang Bei, who heads a team of 50 scientists at the Syngenta Beijing Innovation Center and works closely with a sister R&D facility in Durham. “And they also want to be the global leader as well in this area.”
China may one day need CRISPR-modified plants to provide enough food for its massive population, notes rice researcher Li Jiayang, former president of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing and vice minister of agriculture. “We have to feed 1.4 billion people with very limited natural resources,” says Li, who works at the same CAS campus as Gao, the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology. “We want to get the highest yield of production with the least input on the land from fertilizers and pesticides, and breed supervarieties that are pest and disease resistant as well as drought and salt tolerant. All this means we need to find the key genes and to work with them.”
Before the harvest of that effort can move from labs to farms and tables, however, China needs to resolve how it will regulate CRISPR-engineered crops—a divisive issue in many countries. In a 2018 decision that rocked big agriculture, a European court ruled that such crops are genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that need strict regulation. In contrast, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) exempts genome-edited plants from regulations covering GMOs as long as they were produced not by transferring DNA from other species, but by inducing mutations that could have occurred naturally or through conventional breeding.
Chinese consumers are wary of GM food. The country strictly limits the import of GM crops, and the only GM food it grows are papayas for domestic consumption. But for CRISPR, many plant researchers around the world, Lippman included, assume China will follow in the United States’s footsteps.
Description: https://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/styles/inline__450w__no_aspect/public/cc_6_PLANTLET_DSC_4238_700p.jpg?itok=nbWaS3Ol
A researcher who works with Gao Caixia plants CRISPR-modified wheat in a Beijing greenhouse.

STEFEN CHOW
Whatever the outcome of China’s regulatory decision, it won’t address CRISPR’s own limitations, especially for changing crop traits influenced by multiple genes. “We still have to tackle a lot of those challenges,” Voytas says. But he expects China’s major academic and industrial push into CRISPR to pay off in improved techniques as well as new crops. “China definitely has the foundation to contribute and make discoveries on those frontiers, particularly now that such a big investment has been made.”
GAO DOESN'T HAVE a farming background, and as a teenager she did not dream of becoming a plant scientist. “If I said that, I’d be lying,” Gao says, laughing again.
High school students in China take a standard exam, the gaokao, and their performance leads to offers in specific majors at specific universities. “I thought it would be very nice to be a doctor, but I was not really at that level,” Gao says. She was offered a slot at an agricultural university. “I thought that was fine because otherwise I’d be quite embarrassed to go back to high school for another year to take the exam again.”
Whatever the downsides of an educational system that puts the country’s needs above individual desires, it has helped build a strong agriculture research community for China. And the nation backs it with money. In 2013, the most recent year for which USDA has comparative figures, China’s public funding of agricultural research approached $10 billion—more than twice what the U.S. government spent—and it supported more than 1100 agricultural research institutes. “I of course need to apply for all my grants, but the percentage of my proposals that get funded seems higher than the rest of the world,” Gao says.
Gao did not immediately embrace CRISPR after reading the landmark study in June 2012 that showed how to transform the bacterial system into a tool for altering genomes. Her lab at the time was having steady success with a more cumbersome genome editor, transcription activatorlike effector nuclease (TALEN), the system Voytas invented. “We had knocked out more than 100 genes with TALEN, and we were so proud of it,” Gao says. “And you think, ‘a new technology, arrrgh, should we try it or not?’”
Description: https://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/styles/inline__450w__no_aspect/public/cc_3_WHEAT_DSC_4711_700p.jpg?itok=QeGxmoIe
Gao Caixia and her team grow gene-edited wheat, including strains engineered to resist a common fungal disease, in this experimental station in Beijing.

STEFEN CHOW
Gao’s first CRISPR success—her proof-of-principle editing of plant DNA—was with rice, which has a genome one-eighth the size of the one in humans. But she soon tackled wheat, which has six sets of chromosomes and a genome nearly six times larger than the human one. In a tour de force experiment published in Nature Biotechnology in July 2014, Gao’s group showed how either TALEN or the much simpler CRISPR could cripple production of a protein that makes wheat susceptible to powdery mildew, a fungal disease that extensively damages harvests. With conventional breeding, “that would have been a nightmare, if not impossible,” Lippman says, because wheat has six copies of the key gene, and knocking out all of them would have taken multiple generations.
CRISPR can easily modify several genes in one step, and it is faster and simpler than TALEN. But CRISPR has its limits: In a paper in the 19 April issue of Science, Gao’s lab showed that one popular CRISPR variation called base editors makes many unintended “off-target” mutations. And although CRISPR efficiently knocks out existing genes, putting many plant traits within its reach, it can’t efficiently add new genes. “We are not so good at it,” Gao says. No one is. Gao notes her lab succeeds only about 1% of the time, but it—and the rest of the plant CRISPR world—is trying to improve those odds.
CRISPR researchers are also looking for easier ways to get the components of the genome editor—typically two or more genes—through the tough walls that protect plant cells. For now, scientists depend on cumbersome injection devices known as gene guns or on growing specialized plant-infecting bacteria to deliver the CRISPR apparatus. But China’s new acquisition, Syngenta, may have a more elegant approach. Its North Carolina unit has engineered corn pollen to deliver the CRISPR machinery into cells, where it makes an edit and then disappears. Preliminary evidence, reported in the April issue of Nature Biotechnology, shows the strategy works in wheat and a few vegetable species.
Most of all, scientists still need to identify the right genes to manipulate, says geneticist Catherine Feuillet, who previously headed crop science at Bayer and now is chief scientific officer of Inari Agriculture, a startup in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (The firm has licensed Lippman’s technology and he is a consultant.) Changing a single gene to control pests or a fungus has been the “bread and butter of biotech,” Feuillet says, but multiple genes—often unidentified—affect prized traits such as yield, drought tolerance, or the ability to survive without agrochemicals. “The person who can predict that ‘if you do this edit, this is the performance you have’ is the winner of the whole game,” Feuillet says.
Description: https://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/styles/inline__450w__no_aspect/public/cc_9_TECHNICIANS_DSC_4590_700p2.jpg?itok=1-LiWoIf
Technicians in a lab run by Gao Caixia pick immature embryos from wheat seeds so they can edit their genomes with CRISPR.

STEFEN CHOW
ALTHOUGH GAO, Bei, and the rest of China’s CRISPR plant community are ready to unleash a bounty of edited crops, their government first has to clarify its regulatory policies. Many agricultural industry observers think it’s waiting to see how the public reacts in the United States as companies there tiptoe into that future. In February, Calyxt—a Minneapolis, Minnesota, company that Voytas co-founded—brought to the U.S. market the first gene-edited food product, a “healthier” soybean oil created with TALEN that it sells to the food industry. Calyno oil, the company boasts, has zero trans fats, 80% oleic acid, and “three times the fry life and extended shelf life.”
Corteva, of Wilmington, Delaware, will likely bring the first CRISPR crop to market, and it, too, is far from one that will help feed the world. Corteva—DowDuPont’s agricultural arm, now rebranded with a consumer-friendly name—deleted a gene in order to improve what’s known as waxy corn, which industry uses to make shiny paper and to thicken food. Neal Gutterson, Corteva’s chief technology officer, says the company hopes its new, even waxier corn will help the public become more comfortable with the concept of CRISPR-altered food. “People don’t like the combination of technology and food in the same sentence, certainly not in the same phrase,” he says.
For Corteva, Syngenta, and the other two big ag companies—BASF and Bayer (which acquired Monsanto last year)—the long game is to use CRISPR to develop better versions of their serious moneymakers, the “elite” varieties of a wide range of crops that have big commercial markets. They sell dozens of kinds of elite corn seeds—for example, inbred strains that consistently have high yields or reliable resistance to herbicides. Creating the genetic purity needed for an elite variety typically takes traditional breeding of many generations of plants, and CRISPR is seen as the cleanest way to improve them quickly. The earlier methods of engineering a plant can lead to unwanted genomic changes that must be laboriously culled.
The Chinese government signaled it would back modern genome editing of plants in a 5-year plan issued in 2016, and to many observers the purchase of Syngenta confirmed that. “They have had a plan for years now, and I think the Syngenta acquisition was part of that plan at the outset,” says food scientist Rodolphe Barrangou, a pioneering CRISPR researcher who previously headed genomics R&D at DuPont and now is at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.
Description: https://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/styles/inline__450w__no_aspect/public/cc_11_long%20shelf-life%20tomato_700p.jpg?itok=QHelZBMr
By using CRISPR to disable the gene for an enzyme that degrades the cell wall in fruits, Syngenta is developing an edited tomato (right) that has prolonged shelf life.

SYNGENTA BEIJING INNOVATION CENTER
Barrangou suggests the Chinese government is reticent about how it will regulate CRISPR-modified plants for strategic reasons. “In terms of gamesmanship, is it not possible that they will make the announcement when they’re ready to give the green light at the same time with their own products?”
It’s too soon to say which CRISPR crop Syngenta will try to take to market first if China gives the green light, says Wu Gusui, who heads seed research at the company’s North Carolina facility. “It could be tomato, could be corn, depending on the progress of the next 2 or 3 years.” But he says Syngenta sees CRISPR-modified corn as a big opportunity in China, which grows more hectares of corn than any other crop. Yields per hectare are only 60% of those in the United States because corn ear worms often weaken Chinese crops. A fungus thrives in the weakened plants, producing a toxin that makes the resultant ears unfit for animal feed. As a result, China must import a great deal of corn. (According to USDA, 82% of U.S.-grown corn has been engineered to have a bacterial gene that makes it resistant to ear worms.)
CRISPR could allow Syngenta to quickly modify the corn genomes to introduce insect resistance or other traits, bolstering China’s food supply while transforming agribusiness there. The country’s seed marketplace has some 3000 companies, and none has more than a 10% share of corn, Wu says. “Syngenta is putting a lot of emphasis to grow in China to become the leading seed company. The China market as a whole, if it modernizes as the U.S. has modernized, can be as big as the U.S. market.”
Gao has her own contenders to be China’s first CRISPR crops: different kinds of aromatic rice—“it’s easy to make and very popular,” she says—and wheat that’s resistant to powdery mildew. Regardless of which crops make it to farmers first, Gao says, they likely will arrive long before any CRISPR-derived medical treatment reaches a doctor’s office or an animal product comes to market. Crops may have a lower profile, but the research also presents fewer risks and ethical dilemmas. Propelled by China’s vast investment, it is also much further along.
Just ask Gao. If Chinese regulators do open the door for CRISPR-engineered food, how long would it take before something in one of her culture rooms or greenhouses might be ready for planting on a commercial farm? “Six months,” she says. “That’s why we work with CRISPR.”
And Gao doesn’t laugh when she says that
Use bioresources well, says Japanese scientist
THRISSUR, JULY 29, 2019 23:03 IST
Description: Japanese scientist Akihika Kamoshita addressing students of the KAU at Vellanikkara on Monday.
Japanese scientist Akihika Kamoshita addressing students of the KAU at Vellanikkara on Monday.  

KAU students to go for joint research in University of Tokyo

Japanese scientist Akihika Kamoshita has said efficient utilisation of bioresources, reasonable and feasible land use, and low input production technology are the keys to sustainable agriculture.
Speaking to academia and students of Kerala Agricultural University (KAU) at Vellanikkara here on Monday, Akihika Kamoshita said social changes influence agricultural production, and conflicts were found to stagnate agricultural growth. He quoted the situations in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Cambodia and Thailand as examples.
He explained the research agenda of the Asian Natural Environmental Science Centre (ANESC) under the University of Tokyo, which he represents.

Similarities

“The centre is meant for research collaboration with overseas universities, especially those in Asia. Japan and India have many similarities as far as natural and regional resources are concerned and rice is common food for both countries. Rice ecology in Asia is facing a few challenges, like environmental issues, salinity intrusion, climatic fluctuations, and submergence. These issues are common to Asian countries. We have undertaken rice research in different countries with the focus on hierarchy of biological resources, rice root system and adaptation, seed system and agro-ecology of rice. Crop production research on efficient water use is another vital topic,” Prof. Akihika said.

Collaborative research

KAU Vice Chancellor R. Chandra Babu, in his introductory address, said that the KAU students and faculty would get an opportunity for collaborative research in the University of Tokyo.
“Research opportunities are available for scientists and PhD scholars in the field of efficient resource use in rice production, Root biology for plant adaptation, Arbuscular mycorrihza symbiosis in rice and crops, rice seed system, agro-ecology study on rice , rice business models, etc. The exploratory approach of scientists like Akihika, who is often exploring research opportunities in countries like Combodia and Thailand, should also be imbibed,” he said.

One-to-one discussion

Prof. Akihika had a one-to-one discussion with students, research scholars, and researchers in rice and allied sectors of research.
The programme was coordinated by Director of Research P. Indira Devi. Selected researchers will go to the ANESC in November 2019.

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Global weather chaos is also shrivelling Asia’s crop production
Extreme weather, which scientists blame on climate change has given Asia its heaviest rainfalls and droughts in decades.
by Siraphob Thanthong-Knight • Bloomberg
Description: Much of Australia's east coast is still gripped by a drought that began more than two years ago. And scientists say they're now seeing the same pattern of extreme weather that's gripped Europe in Asia [Brendon Thorne/Bloomberg]
Much of Australia's east coast is still gripped by a drought that began more than two years ago. And scientists say they're now seeing the same pattern of extreme weather that's gripped Europe in Asia [Brendon Thorne/Bloomberg]
In a year when record heat is scorching Europe and the heaviest rain in decades has inundated parts of the U.S. Midwest, the Asia Pacific region is suffering from its own maelstrom of extreme weather.
Drought, and floods in some areas, have devastated the livelihoods of thousands of people, and damaged crops in an area that produces most of the world’s palm oil, natural rubber and rice, and more than a third of its sugar. While parts of China endured the most rain in almost 60 years, water levels on the Mekong, one of Asia’s largest river systems, have fallen to among the lowest ever, and areas of southern India are battling relentless drought.
“Over the past several years, we’ve been seeing more dryness than not in the region,” said Donald Keeney, senior agricultural meteorologist at Maxar, a U.S.-based weather consultant. “These conditions will cause a decline in production of the main crops later this year and into next,” he said.
Dry conditions have wilted rice fields in Thailand and Indonesia and parched sugar cane plantations and oilseed crops in India. Here’s a snapshot of how weather is affecting output in some key areas.
China
In northern regions, lack of rain and drought have threatened some crops, though the impact is mitigated by irrigation. By contrast, some southern provinces had the heaviest rainfall since 1961 in the five weeks to early July, according to the meteorological administration, hampering early rice output and worsening pest problems. China is the top producer of wheat and rice, and second-biggest for corn, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.
India
India jostles with Brazil as the biggest producer of sugar. Output this year may drop to the lowest in three years as a prolonged drought shrivels cane in the states of Maharashtra and Karnataka, trimming the domestic surplus and potentially curbing exports. Deficient rainfall from the annual monsoon also threatens oilseed crops, which could boost foreign purchases of edible oils, including palm oil, where the country is the largest importer. Still, Mumbai has been hit by heavy downpours, a sign of the weather’s erratic nature.
Indonesia, Malaysia
These are the world’s top palm oil producers. The next three months will be crucial to determine how output will turn out next year and dryness in areas of Borneo island will be closely watched, said Ling Ah Hong, director of plantation consultant Ganling Sdn, who’s worked in the industry for more than four decades. Rice production is threatened by dry weather on Java island, where some areas are without rain for more than 60 days.
Thailand
Thailand is the globe’s top grower of rubber, and one of the largest exporters of sugar and rice. The worst drought in years in some areas is hurting crops, and caused authorities to cut estimates for cane output and rice shipments. Cloud-seeding planes have been deployed, and pumps and trucks have been used to divert water to the affected areas in the north and northeast.
Vietnam
A heat wave and drought have hit parts of the country, hurting rice and rubber. Still, the central highlands, where most coffee is grown, have escaped major harm so far. Vietnam is the largest producer of the robusta variety.
Australia
Much of the east coast is still gripped by a drought that began more than two years ago. The dry conditions are worst in Queensland, the biggest beef-producing state, but extend into much of New South Wales. The situation is much better in Western Australia, where the wheat crop had good late rain and is likely to be on a par with the bumper season last year.

Groundwater policies fire up air pollution in northwest India

By Krishna Ramanujan |

 July 29, 2019
A measure to conserve groundwater in northwestern India has led to unexpected consequences: Added air pollution in an area already beset by haze and smog.
Description: rice straw fire
Dakshinamurthy Vedachalam/CIMMYT
Burning of rice straw before wheat planting in northwest India.
A new study reveals how water-use policies require farmers to transplant rice later in the year, which in turn delays harvests and concentrates agricultural burnings of crop residues in November, a month when breezes stagnate, leading to increased air pollution.
The perfect storm of conditions during November has created almost 30% higher atmospheric concentrations of fine particulate matter, small particles that are especially concerning for human health.
The study, “Tradeoffs Between Groundwater Conservation and Air Pollution From Agricultural Fires in Northwest India,” published June 17 in Nature Sustainability, is a collaboration between researchers from Cornell and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).
The scientists analyzed groundwater conservation policies and their effect on the timing of farmers’ planting and harvesting crops and burning crop residues. They also connected this information with meteorological and air pollution data. 
“This analysis shows that we need to think about sustainable agriculture from a systems perspective, because it’s not a single objective we’re managing for – it’s multidimensional, and solving one problem in isolation can exacerbate others ,” said Andrew McDonald, associate professor of soil and crop sciences and a co-author of the paper. Balwinder-Singh, a cropping systems simulation modeler at CIMMYT in New Delhi, India, is the paper’s first author.
Northwest India suffers from two critical sustainability issues: air pollution and groundwater depletion. Almost 1.1 million Indians died from air pollution in 2015, adding up to costs equaling 3% of the country’s gross domestic product, according to the study.
Groundwater depletion is an ongoing issue, and rice cultivation is particularly water-intensive. News reports in June shed light on water scarcity in Chennai, in the south; in the northwest, two groundwater conservation measures enacted in 2009 delayed groundwater use by farmers until later in the season. The acts ultimately prohibited transplanting rice into paddies until after June 20.
Using time-series satellite data from NASA, the researchers showed that for six rice seasons before the groundwater acts were implemented, an average of 86% of the rice-growing area in the states of Punjab and Haryana was planted on or before June 28. Less than 40% was planted on or before that date after the acts passed, according to the study.
Data showed that rice harvests then shifted later, with an aggregate eight-day harvest delay in late October and early November. This shift has led to a narrower window and a significant increase in crop residue burning in the first three weeks of November. Before the acts, the peak date for agricultural fires was Oct. 24, with 490 fires per day; it was Nov. 4, with 681 fires per day, after the acts were passed.
At the same time, meteorological data revealed that the first two weeks of November were on average cooler than the last two weeks of October, coupled with weaker winds, causing increased, stagnating air pollution in the metropolis of New Delhi, which is heavily affected by particulate matter from these agricultural fires.
Farmers must quickly clear residues immediately following rice harvests in this area, known as India’s bread basket, to prepare fields for planting wheat that grows in the winter.
Solutions could include new agronomic technologies such as the tractor-mounted Happy Seeder, a device that allows farmers to drill through heavy crop residues and plant seeds without burning. They might couple such advances with shorter-duration rice varieties that offer flexibility in planting and harvesting dates.
Other options include investigating alternative uses for crop residues, such as collecting and selling biomass for power generation, bio-char creation, or as material for paper or furniture.
“There may be uses that are economically viable but they have to be considered as part of a comprehensive solution,” McDonald said.
Finally, government planners are promoting agricultural development in northeastern India, which benefits from more rain and water.
Amit Srivastava at CIMMYT in New Delhi and Bruno Gerard at CIMMYT in Mexico City are co-authors of the study.

Customs denies undervaluation of rice imports

 July 30, 2019, 12:52 PM
By Betheena Kae Unite
The Bureau of Customs (BOC) denied allegations by a group of farmers that rice importations have been undervalued, maintaining that they have been following internationally recognized system of valuation.
The Federation of Free Farmers, Inc. (FFF) in a recent statement lamented the “apparent undervaluation of rice imports following the enactment of the Rice Tariffication Law or RA 11203 last March 2019.”
It can be recalled that the Department of Finance (DOF) and the Customs bureau reported a collection of P5.9 billion in tariffs from imports of 1.43-million metric tons of rice from March to July.
However, Raul Montemayor, National Manager of the FFF, said that with these figures, the importers “paid P4.24 billion less than what was due from them.”
“If we use the DOF figures and assume a P52 per dollar exchange rate, it will come out that the average landed price of the rice imports before imposing tariffs was US$227 per metric ton. On the other hand, data from international monitoring groups such as the Food and Agriculture Organization indicate that the real landed cost of these imports should have been around US$391 per ton if these were 25 percent broken rice,” Montemayor pointed out.
“In effect, importers appear to have undervalued their shipments by 42 percent and paid P4.24 billion less than what was due from them,” he added.
Montemayor also said that importers could reduce their tariff obligations by “deliberately lowering the declared value of their imports in connivance with their suppliers abroad.”
The Customs Assessment Operations and Coordinating Group, however, revealed that it was the office of the Import Assessment Service that provides reference values on rice import as guides when the veracity of the declared values are disputable.
“All ports abide with the said published data except when the commercial invoice of a rice shipment is supported by genuine and validated proof of payment such as bank telegraphic transfer of payment, sales contract and other similar legitimate instrumentalities that indicated actual sales transaction between the seller and the buyer,” the bureau said in a statement Monday.
This system, it added, is a World Trade Organization internationally recognized system of valuation where the Philippines was a signatory. It is also prescribed under Section 701 of the Customs Modernization and Tariff Act.
The bureau is expected to collect P10-billion tariff collection for the year for remittance to the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund, which was created to help the transition of palay growers and rice farmer cooperatives to a new rice regime

Rice industry group wants tighter import regulations

The Bureau of Customs denies allegations that shipments of rice are undervalued
Anna Mogato
5:45 PM, July 29, 2019
Updated 5:45 PM, July 29, 2019
LOCAL PRODUCTIVITY DROPPING. Months after the rice tariffication law was passed, industry stakeholders' worst fears have come true as some rice mills halt operations and prefer to import rice instead. File photo by Jire Carreon/Rappler
MANILA, Philippines – Amid the influx of allegedly undervalued rice imports, the Philippine Confederation of Grains Associations (PCGA) on Monday, July 29, called for stricter government regulations.
PCGA president Joji Co told reporters on the sidelines of the launch of the Masaganang Ani 300 program that aside from reviewing Republic Act (RA) No. 11203 or the rice tariffication law, the government should also tighten monitoring of imports.
"What they should do here is to enforce strictly the customs law on rice imports.... What is important is strict implementation of the customs law," he said.
Co shrugged off the Department of Agriculture's proposal to reimpose suggested retail prices on rice, as the oversupply of rice in the market already means prices should drop. However, Co noted that retail rice prices are still somewhat high.
RA No. 11203 author and sponsor Senator Cynthia Villar earlier said there is no need to review the 5-month-old law, but agreed that the Bureau of Customs (BOC) should prevent the undervaluation of rice imports.

Rice import duties on track to fund RCEF, BoC says
July 29, 2019 | 10:45 pm
Description: https://www.bworldonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/NFA-rice-imports-073019.jpgREUTERS
THE BUREAU OF CUSTOMS (BoC) said it has collected tariffs worth nearly P6.5 billion as of mid-July on rice imports since the Rice Tariffication Law went into effect in March, with the monthly average of P1.4 billion on track to fund the P10-billion-a-year Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF).
In a statement Monday, the BoC said it is “on course” to meet RCEF funding requirements, which will allow the fund to support farm mechanization, seed and fertilizer acquisition and make credit more readily available.
The Rice Tariffication Law permitted more liberal imports of rice by private entities, who had to pay an import tariff of 35% on foreign grain sourced from Southeast Asia. It replaced the system of largely government-to-government rice orders overseen by the National Food Authority (NFA), which has been relegated to procuring rice from domestic farmers.
“At an average of P1.4 billion a month, the BoC remains on course to collect the minimum of P10 billion needed for the RCEF per year,” the BoC said.
The BoC reported to its parent agency, the Department of Finance, that it took in P6.479 billion from importer-traders as of July 15. It also raised a further P3.103 billion from the tax on import permits issued by the National Food Authority (NFA) since January.
The Port of Subic collected P1.598 billion worth of rice duties, followed by the Manila International Container Port (MICP) with P1.033 billion collections, and the Port of Manila with P998.77 million.

BOC may start audit of rice traders next month–official

By Rea Cu

Description: https://39byfk2z09ab1y1bzj1l5r82-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Bureau-of-Customs.jpgBureau of Customs
The Bureau of Customs (BOC) said it is ready to start its audit of rice traders next month in line with its probe to determine if there was undervaluation of rice imports.
The Department of Finance (DOF) also announced on Monday that the BOC has collected a total of P6.479 billion in tariffs from rice imported by traders as of July 15 following the implementation of Republic Act (RA) 11203.
“We are preparing the audit notification letters. Yes, we will issue [by the first week of August],” Vincent Maronilla told the BusinessMirror. The BOC official said earlier that the values of the rice shipments declared by traders were “inconsistent.”
He said the BOC has the power to collect duties and taxes if there were deficiencies in the assessment made on imported rice shipments. He noted that shipments are open for post-clearance audit for up to three years.
The BOC will conduct the audit after the Federation of Free Farmers  Inc.  said rice imports made after RA 11203 took effect were undervalued. However, in a statement issued on Monday, the BOC denied the allegations of the FFF.
The BOC said its Assessment Operations and Coordinating Group (AOCG) revealed that it is the office of the Import Assessment Service (IAS) that provides Reference Values on rice import as guides when the veracity of the declared values are disputable.
“All Ports abide with the said published data except when the Commercial Invoice of a rice shipment is supported by genuine and validated Proof of Payment such as Bank Telegraphic transfer of Payment, Sales Contract and other similar legitimate instrumentalities that indicated actual sales transaction between the seller and the buyer,” the BOC said.
The bureau said the system it uses is recognized by the World Trade Organization of which the Philippines is a member and is prescribed under the Customs Modernization and Tariff Act (CMTA).

Collection

The BOC reported to Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III during a recent executive committee meeting that it collected P6.479 billion in duties from traders who imported rice after the law took effect on March 5.
The DOF said the government also collected P3.103 billion in payments from traders for import permits issued by the National Food Authority since January.
Earlier this month, the DOF said the BOC had collected P5.9 billion in tariffs slapped on 1.43 million metric tons (MMT) of rice imported by local traders from March 5 to June 30.
Maronilla clarified, however, that the P5.9 billion was collected from rice shipments made in January to June.
He said the BOC’s report to the DOF was on the bureau’s performance for the first half of the year and not just for the March-to-June period, when the new law was already in effect.
“[The collections] from March 5 to June, when the rice tariffication law is already in effect, were for 966,690 metric tons,” he said.
Tariffs assessed on 966,690 MT of rice reached around P4 billion to P4.5 billion, according to Maronilla.
Basing computations on Maronilla’s clarification, tariffs collected from rice imports from July 1 to July 15 amounted to around P600 million.
The BOC official also expressed confidence that the bureau’s collection of rice tariffs will surpass P10 billion, the amount that should be allocated annually to the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF), under the new law.
Section 13(c) of the rice tariffication law states that 10 percent of the P10-billion RCEF shall be made available in the form of credit facility with minimal interest rates and with minimum collateral requirements to rice farmers and cooperatives.
The rest of the RCEF will be set aside for farm machinery and equipment; rice seed development, propagation and promotion; and rice extension services, as provided under RA 11203.
On top of paying tariffs, rice importers are required under RA 11203 to secure sanitary and phytosanitary import clearances from the Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Plant Industry, which assumed the food safety regulation function of the NFA under the rice trade liberalization law.

IRRI to support researchers in Bangladesh’s agri sector

UNB, Dhaka
30 July, 2019 09:40:10 AM

Description: IRRI to support researchers in Bangladesh’s agri sector
Representative of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Bangladesh Dr Humnath Bhandari has reiterated the organisation's continued support for capacity building of the researchers working in Bangladesh's agricultural sector. He said IRRI is willing to strengthen its cooperation with Bangladesh especially in the areas of food security, nutrition, developing agricultural systems as well as realising the challenges in agricultural sector for achieving inclusive agricultural development.
Dr Bhandari, who presented his credentials to Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Sunday, also informed that International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) had worked closely with Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) to develop 'Sonali Rice' which is fortified with vitamin A.
The Foreign Minister welcomed him to Bangladesh and wished him success in discharging his responsibilities and assured him of the support of the government.
Dr Momen briefed him about the actions taken by the government under the visionary leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to ensure food security in Bangladesh and informed him that Bangladesh had become the 4th largest producer of rice in the world attaining food self-sufficiency.
The Foreign Minister also highlighted the socio-economic development of Bangladesh since Independence in 1971 especially during the last decade under the present government, said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday.
Dr Bhandari, a national of Nepal, has more than 15 years of experience in agricultural research-for-development focusing on rural livelihood, food security, poverty reduction, natural resources management, rice-based cropping systems, climate smart agriculture, agricultural technology adoption and impact, food value chains, agribusiness, market system development, and policy analysis.
Before joining his new role, Dr Bhandari worked as a scientist (Applied Economist) of IRRI in Bangladesh since 2010.

Tariff rollout hurts PH rice millers


JULY 30, 2019
About 40 percent of the total 10,000 big and small rice-milling operations in the country have stopped their operations after experiencing the negative impacts of the implementation of a new rice regime including the tremendous decrease in the price of locally-produced palay or unhusked rice, the industry said.
Such milling facilities were those located in major rice-producing provinces like Nueva Ecija, Isabela, Mindoro and Panay Islands, Joji Co, president of the Philippine Confederation of Grains Associations, said at the sidelines of the launching of “Masaganang Ani 300” and “Support Local Farmers” on Monday in Quezon City.
Co explained that rice millers were forced to stop their operations since they bought palay during the last wet season harvest at much higher price. Because of this, they could not sell their milled rice at a competitive price against the cheap imported rice coming in.
While about 60 percent to 70 percent of rice milling facilities are still operating, rice supply of such businesses are those which have been imported following the rollout of the Republic Act 11203 or Rice Tariffication Law, he said.
“[In] intercity in Bocaue Bulacan, 80 to 90 percent of those rice mills are now milling but their stocks of rice, where do they come from? Importation,” Co said, noting that about 150 rice milling facilities have reportedly stopped their operations.
Since the passage of the new law in February this year, more than 1.5 million tons of imported rice have already entered the country, according to the Bureau of Customs.
To address the problem on rice smuggling, which have been a trade issue in the country for decades, Co said the government should “enforce strictly the customs law.”
Just last two weeks, authorities seized 10,000 sacks of smuggled rice worth P12 million near an island off Basilan. In November last year, the Philippine Coast Guard also intercepted a vessel containing about 50,000 bags of smuggled rice in Tonquil, Sulu.
Co also expressed support on the calls to review RA 11203 and joined the Philippine Chamber of Agriculture and Food, Inc.’s (PCAFI) push for the government to start increasing the tariff on imported rice entering the country, in a bid to help plummeting prices of palay to recover from a steep drop to as low as P12 per kilo in some provinces.
“[But] what is more important is not the safeguard on the duty. [It] is the strict implementation on the customs laws,” he noted.
Under RA 11203, a special safeguard duty on rice may be put put in place to protect the rice industry from sudden or extreme price fluctuations.
A safeguard duty is a temporary increase in import duty of an agricultural product to deal with import surges or price falls, under the World Trade Agreement (WTO) on Agriculture.
The Rice Tariffication Act has allowed private traders to apply for unlimited importations of rice as long as they secure the necessary permits and pay the proper duties, set at 35 percent for rice sourced from ASEAN countries. A 40-percent tariff shall be levied on shipments sourced from non-Asean countries within the minimum access volume of 350,000 MT, going up to 180 percent for out-quota imports.
The law stipulates that through the P10-billion Rice Competitive Rice Fund (RCEF), the Department of Agriculture (DA) through the Philippine Center for Postharvest Development and Mechanization (PHilMech) will provide farmers with machinery and equipment worth P5 billion, free high-yielding seeds worth P3 billion from Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice), P1 billion for credit and P1 billion in training through the Agricultural Training Institute.

Conservation Ag Movement Encourages "Trust in Food" 

WASHINGTON, DC -- Last Friday, policymakers, journalists, and leaders in the agriculture and food industries gathered here for a discussion of the future of sustainability and conservation in U.S. food production. Hosted by Farm Journal's Trust in Food initiative and the Farm Journal Foundation, the event kicked off America's Conservation Ag Movement (ACAM), a public-private partnership that focuses on empowering farmers through conservation and sustainability.

USDA Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation Bill Northey delivered a keynote speech that emphasized the mutually beneficial relationship between farming and sustainability. "As the saying goes, 'You can't kick people toward you.' We have to figure out how to make all the changes we want to make in agriculture work for farmers," said Northey. "Today's consumers are more interested than ever before in who's growing and raising their food and how. Building transparency has to begin on the farm. It has to start with producers working together to meet consumer expectations for a healthy, planet-friendly food system, and telling consumers about the systems of production we use that steward water, land, air, and create abundant wildlife habitats."

U.S. rice was a hot topic at the event, with panelists highlighting the many achievements of the rice industry in sustainability and wildlife conservation.

"We work with rice farmers and USA Rice to provide technical assistance and financial incentives to improve water quality and increase their efficiency in all things that help their bottom line," said Craig R. LeSchack, interim chief conservation officer at Ducks Unlimited. "It comes down to working with landowners in ways that make economic sense to them, but those farmers have a conservation ethic already instilled. We're able to tap into that through these programs."

The event concluded with a special preview tour of a new outdoor installation on the National Mall entitled, "Agriculture Through the Voice of the Farmer." The garden includes many U.S. crops and showcases technologies that are critical to producing affordable, wholesome food while preserving healthy soil, clean water, and abundant wildlife habitat. The installation is designed to be educational, connecting visitors to the growers who produce their food through video kiosks and a farmer-voiced smartphone walking tour.The garden will be open to the public through October 2020.

Zero Tolerance Policy Being Pursued Against Quality Of Food Being Served To Hujjaj

Zeeshan Aziz (@imziishan)  
Description: Zero tolerance policy being pursued against quality of food being served to Hujjaj

Brushing aside the complaints of inferior quality food being served to pilgrims in Saudi Arabia, Director General Hajj, Dr Sajid Yousfani said zero tolerance policy was being pursued regarding quality of food being served to Government Hajj Scheme pilgrims

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - APP - 29th Jul, 2019 ) :Brushing aside the complaints of inferior quality food being served to pilgrims in Saudi Arabia, Director General Hajj, Dr Sajid Yousfani said zero tolerance policy was being pursued regarding quality of food being served to Government Hajj Scheme pilgrims.
Talking to APP, he said a network has been working round the clock to check and ensure serving quality of food. Food coordinator and assistant food coordinator were assigned to persistently check the quality of food. The whole cooking process was being monitored threadbare. The kitchens of 13 catering companies were being religiously checked and monitored.
On receiving any complaint, the kitchen is sealed forthwith. He urged the pilgrims to lodge complaint against food, transport, accommodation or any other complaint to a dedicated Call Centre, established in Makkah to receive complaints of Pakistani pilgrims round the clock.
Hujajj can call to lodge complaints or queries on toll free number 800 1166622 from within Saudi Arabia, while +966125500418 can be dialed from Pakistan or any other part of the world. A complaint is automatically lodged and fed in the computerized Hajj Management System as soon as it landed at the Call Center from where it is forwarded to concerned department for redressal.
The 24 Hours Complaint Management System has also been set up to resolve problems of Hujjaj.
He said Pakistani taste food including mutton, chicken, rice, vegetables, sweet dish, lassi, fruit and mineral water was being provided to pilgrims thrice a day in hygienic manner.
He said a total of 135,000 pilgrims including 96,000 government and 39,000 private scheme have reached Saudi Arabia for performing the sacred religious ceremony. He said 50,000 pilgrims have reached Makkah Mukarma after visiting Madina Munawwara. While 8,000 pilgrims of government scheme were still residing at Madina Munawwara.
Seasonal staff of Religious Ministry, Hajj Medical Mission, Moavineen were ready to serve intending pilgrims. Monitoring of Hajj Group Organisers (HGOs) were continuing. Haram Guides were available to guiding the pilgrims to their destinations. Special arrangements have been made to provide wheelchairs. Free helpline has been established for registering complaints of pilgrims. Ministry has established 9 dispensaries and a 40 bed hospital for providing emergency treatment to Hujjaj.

Suspected Football-Sized Meteorite Lands In East Indian Rice Paddy
00:24 29.07.2019
Description: MeteoriteMeteorites are falling rocks or debris from space which enter the Earth's atmosphere but are not burnt up as they pass through it.
CNN reported on Thursday that an alleged meteorite landed in a rice paddy in an east Indian village, according to local authorities. 
The rock plummeted from the sky and hit the field on Wednesday. According to the farmers, the rock was around the size of a football and weighed about 13-kilograms.
​Observers from the village saw a brown object falling into a rice paddy, causing them to flee the scene as the meteorite crashed into the field leaving a gust of smoke, leaving a large crater.
Shirsat Kapil Ashok, the magistrate for Madhubani district, spoke to Agence France Press (AFP), saying that "The farmers were working in the paddy field when this heavy rock fell from the sky with a very loud noise." 
The workers later returned to the area to obtain the rock from the crater it had created.
Ashok also repeated apparent claims by the villagers that the rock had "magnetic properties".
While Indian scientists are currently looking into whether or not the find was in fact a meteorite, NASA have since disputed the claim.
India has had a history of meteor landings. In 2016, India's Tamil Nadu state authorities claimed that a meteorite killed a bus driver.
Punjab, Haryana farmers diversify a tad from rice
TV Jayan  New Delhi | Updated on July 29, 2019  Published on July 29, 2019

Better prices commanded by crops like cotton and maize last year and crop diversification strategies adopted by Punjab and Haryana governments have prompted farmers in the two States to plant less rice this season as compared to previous kharif season. Description: https://bl.thgim.com/economy/agri-business/mf66vi/article28749461.ece/alternates/PORTRAIT_435/BL30-MAIZE1
While the area under rice in Haryana till last week was a little over 10 lakh hectares (lh), nearly 15 per cent lower than 11.87 lh planted in kharif 2018-19. In Punjab too, nearly a little over 1 lh normally used for growing rice has been diverted to plant cotton and maize. With rice sowing being almost at the fag end as far as the season is concerned, not much change is expected in the cropping pattern now.
Haryana State agriculture authorities attribute the reduction in rice cultivation to the sustained campaign they ran. “Farmers with at least 50,000 hectares have enrolled as part of the campaign to grow maize or pulses. We have given them a cash benefit of  4,500 per hectare, free seeds and free crop insurance cover under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), said Suresh Gahlawat, Assistant Director (Extension) at Haryana Agriculture Department.
“Besides, they have a standing offer of buying back the maize crop at minimum support price decided by the Centre,” he said. Apart from maize, cotton sowing is also marginally up in Haryana to 6.76 lh as against 6.65 lh same period last year. However, many farmers in the State alleged that more farmers would have availed the scheme had the State government revealed its plans earlier on. “We are all concerned about the depleting groundwater levels in the State. If the State was really concerned about it why did they announce it at the eleventh hour,” asked Rattan Mann, Bharatiya Kisan Union State President. It should have taken the farmers into confidence in advance, say, February or March, he felt.
According to Sutanta Kumar Airi, Director of Agriculture in Punjab, the State to ran a campaign to lure farmers away from planting rice and this had some success. Punjab farmers planted rice only on 28.53 lh till last week as compared to 29.57 lh in the corresponding week last year. On other hand, the area under maize cultivation has gone up to 1.6 lh as against a little over 1 lh same period last year, said Airi. The State also witnessed a spurt in cotton cultivation, mainly because the cash crop fetched good price in the previous year. The area under cotton planted has crossed 4 lh last week as against 2.84 lh in same week in 2018-19.
“Even in rice, we are encouraging farmers to grow more basmati rice this time than non-basmati varieties to improve export prospects, said the Punjab government official.
There are other few States which too witnessed a reduction in rice planting. Among the States that have reported less area under rice as compared to last season are Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, madhya Pradesh, Telangana, and West Bengal. The reduction mainly on account of monsoon rainfall deficit and most of them have sufficient time to make up for the lost time with the transplanting has covered less than half the area normally covered.

India's non-basmati rice export falls after govt withdraws tax incentive

Government's decision to increase MSP consistently had raised cost of procuring

Dilip Kumar Jha  |  Mumbai  Last Updated at July 29, 2019 23:43 IST
Description: Brown: (Kichadi Samba )  A variety native to Tamil Nadu, it has a relatively low GI of 50 and was preferred by royalty. The unrefined brown raw rice has all of its bran intact, and is more nutritious than parboiled rice.
Brown: (Kichadi Samba ) A variety native to Tamil Nadu, it has a relatively low GI of 50 and was preferred by royalty. The unrefined brown raw rice has all of its bran intact, and is more nutritious than parboiled rice.
India’s exports of non-basmati rice declined by half between April and May this year after the government withdrew 5 per cent incentives from April 1.
Data compiled by the government-owned Agricultural & Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (Apeda) showed India’s overall exports at 711,837 tonnes for April-May 2019 compared to 1.53 million tonnes shipped for the corresponding period of the previous year. In value term, India’s overall non-basmati rice exports plunged by more than 50 per cent to $294 million (Rs 2046 crore) for the first two months of FY 2019-2020 as against $652 million (Rs 4347 crore) in the same period last year.
The decline in non-basmati rice exports raises questions about India’s policy making, say analysts. In order to help farmers, the government has increased minimum support price (MSP) for the last several years. This has made Indian rice uncompetitive for exports. A 5 per cent tax cushion encouraged 7-8 million tonnes in exports of non-basmati rice annually.
“Some importing countries like Bangladesh have started growing rice on their own which reduced their overall annual import. Trade sources are also blaming continuous MSP increase for a reduction in India’s non-basmati rice exports,” said a senior Apeda official.
Bangladesh had emerged as the largest importer of India’s non-basmati rice with 1.87 million tonnes in 2017-18. In the following year, however, farmers in Bangladesh expanded their sowing area resulting into higher output from local sources and thus proportionate decline in their overall non-basmati rice import. Thus, in FY 2018-19, India’s non-basmati rice exports plunged by a drastic 70 per cent to Bangladesh to a mere 480,567 tonnes.
With favourable agro climatic condition continues this year as well, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported Bangladesh’s rice output to rise further 35.3 million tonnes this year as compared to 34.9 million tonnes and 32.6 million tonnes in 2018-19 and 2017-18 respectively.


Description: India's non-basmati rice export falls after govt withdraws tax incentive
“Declining import from Bangladesh is self-explanatory as to why India’s non-basmati rice exports are falling,” said the Apeda official.
In fact, exporters are worried over sustained rise in the MSP of paddy which translates into the proportionate increase in rice prices. To attract farmers, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has raised MSP of common variety of paddy by 30 per cent in the last four years from Rs 1410 a quintal in 2015-16 to Rs 1815 a quintal in 2019-20.
“The sustained hike in MSP has made India outpriced by $25 in the world market resulting into lower demand of Indian rice. Other rice growing countries including Pakistan and Thailand have filled the gap,” said Gurnam Arora, Joint Managing Director, Kohinoor Foods, one of the largest exporters of basmati and non-basmati rice in India.
With no relief in sight, India’s non-basmati rice exports are likely to fall steeply in coming months.
Meanwhile, bumper local production and possibility of less export are expected to worsen challenges for storage and handling of rice in India.
India’s total rice output is estimated at 115.6 million tonnes for 2018-19 as compared to 96.48 million tonnes reported in the previous year. India’s annual rice consumption is estimated at around 90 million tonnes.
https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/india-s-non-basmati-rice-export-falls-after-govt-withdraws-tax-incentive-119072901168_1.html

India rice exports could hit 7-year low on weak demand, higher prices: Industry

Lower shipments from India will help rivals such as Vietnam and Myanmar in raising their exports, according to Indian exporters.

Reuters|
Jul 29, 2019, 09.29 AM IST
Description: Description: 13Indian exporters said the aggressive liquidation of old stocks by China, the world's biggest rice producer, has also hit Indian exports.
MUMBAI: India's rice exports are likely to fall to their lowest level in seven years, industry officials say, as weak demand from African countries weighs and shippers absorb the absence of government incentives that supported previous sales.

Lower shipments from India will help rivals such as Vietnam and Myanmar in raising their exports, according to Indian exporters, but could also force Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government to increase buying from farmers, even as it struggles to liquidate last year's stocks.

"Inventories have been piled up in Africa," said Nitin Gupta, vice president for Olam India's rice business. "A lot of Indian demand has been diverted to Myanmar and China as Indian prices are out of parity."

The south Asian country could export 10 to 11 million tonnes of rice in the fiscal year 2019/20 that started on April 1, Gupta said.

India exported 11.95 million tonnes of rice in 2018/19 through March 31, down 7.2% from the previous 12 months, even though the country provided incentives for exports of non-basmati rice for four months.

The country exports non-basmati rice to mainly Bangladesh, Nepal, Benin and Senegal, and premier basmati rice to Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. In basmati rice exports, India competes with Pakistan, while in non-basmati rice exports rivals are Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar.

The government incentives for exports were temporary and discontinued on March 25, said B V Krishna Rao, president of the Rice Exporters Association (REA). "The incentive needs to be restored quickly," he said, "otherwise there could be huge drop in the exports this year."

India's rice exports in April-May fell 30% from a year ago to 1.58 million tonnes as shipments of non-basmati rice fell more than 50% to 711,837 tonnes, according to data compiled by Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority.

Shipments of white rice from India have nearly stopped altogether as Vietnam and Myanmar are offering more than $30 per tonne discount over Indian prices, said Gupta.

In parboiled rice, India has been trying to compete with Thailand but couldn't reduce export prices due to higher paddy, or unhusked rice, prices, said Himanshu Agarwal, executive director at Satyam Balajee, India's biggest rice exporter.

Paddy buying by central and state governments have lifted prices in the open market, making it difficult for exporters to compete profitably in the world market, said Agarwal.

The central state of Chhattisgarh, a leading rice producer, raised the minimum paddy buying price to 2,500 rupees ($36.20) per 100 kg in 2018, from 1,750 rupees - a 43% jump.

Indian exporters said the aggressive liquidation of old stocks by China, the world's biggest rice producer, has also hit Indian exports.

"China is exporting a huge amount of old rice to African markets. Africa being a major client, volumes have significantly dropped from India," said Agarwal.

($1 = 69.0550 Indian rupees)

Use bioresources well, says Japanese scientist
Thrissur, July 29, 2019 23:03 IST
Updated: July 29, 2019 23:03 IST

Japanese scientist Akihika Kamoshita addressing students of the KAU at Vellanikkara on Monday.  
Thrissur, July 29, 2019 23:03 IST
KAU students to go for joint research in University of Tokyo
Japanese scientist Akihika Kamoshita has said efficient utilisation of bioresources, reasonable and feasible land use, and low input production technology are the keys to sustainable agriculture.
Speaking to academia and students of Kerala Agricultural University (KAU) at Vellanikkara here on Monday, Akihika Kamoshita said social changes influence agricultural production, and conflicts were found to stagnate agricultural growth. He quoted the situations in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Cambodia and Thailand as examples.
He explained the research agenda of the Asian Natural Environmental Science Centre (ANESC) under the University of Tokyo, which he represents.
Similarities
“The centre is meant for research collaboration with overseas universities, especially those in Asia. Japan and India have many similarities as far as natural and regional resources are concerned and rice is common food for both countries. Rice ecology in Asia is facing a few challenges, like environmental issues, salinity intrusion, climatic fluctuations, and submergence. These issues are common to Asian countries. We have undertaken rice research in different countries with the focus on hierarchy of biological resources, rice root system and adaptation, seed system and agro-ecology of rice. Crop production research on efficient water use is another vital topic,” Prof. Akihika said.
Collaborative research
KAU Vice Chancellor R. Chandra Babu, in his introductory address, said that the KAU students and faculty would get an opportunity for collaborative research in the University of Tokyo.
“Research opportunities are available for scientists and PhD scholars in the field of efficient resource use in rice production, Root biology for plant adaptation, Arbuscular mycorrihza symbiosis in rice and crops, rice seed system, agro-ecology study on rice , rice business models, etc. The exploratory approach of scientists like Akihika, who is often exploring research opportunities in countries like Combodia and Thailand, should also be imbibed,” he said.
One-to-one discussion
Prof. Akihika had a one-to-one discussion with students, research scholars, and researchers in rice and allied sectors of research.
The programme was coordinated by Director of Research P. Indira Devi. Selected researchers will go to the ANESC in November 2019.

New Research Aims To Bring Together Tribes, UW On Wild Rice Protection And Restoration

By Chris Malina
·       Friday, August 2, 2019, 4:15pm
·       Friday, August 2, 2019, 6:15pm
Description: Wild RiceDescription: Forward logo Description: Print HTML logo Description: Facebook logo Description: Twitter logo
A new research project lead by a UW graduate student looks to bring together tribal and university researchers on the issue of wild rice protection and restoration. We hear from the student about the aims of the project, as well as the state of wild rice in Wisconsin.  
Host: 
Producer(s): Chris Malina
Wisconsin Public Radio, © Copyright 2019, Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System and Wisconsin Educational Communications Board.

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3rd Rice Short Course is at the Hamilton Road Field and Rice Experiment Station in Biggs


This year will mark the third rice-specific weed course at the Hamilton Road Field and the Rice Experiment Station in Biggs, CA on Friday, Sept. 6, 2019.
The day will begin with an interactive field tour of the research plots (Hamilton Road Field) where attendees can get up close to the weeds and rice (bring your boots!) The course will include a hands-on weed identification session on emerging and mature weeds. In the afternoon, speakers will address several pertinent topics in CA rice, including algae, weedy rice, regulatory update, best management for grasses, and how to construct a weed management program.
The course is a collaborative effort between UC Cooperative Extension (UCCE), UC Davis, and the California Cooperative Rice Research Foundation (CCRRF.) “This course provides a strong foundation for weed management in California rice, as well as a chance for discussion of ideas for dealing with resistance and emerging weed species” said Whitney Brim-DeForest, UCCE Rice Farm Advisor. The event is a great opportunity for pest control advisers, growers, industry, extension, and interested students to gain a deeper understanding of topics that affect rice weed management.
Enrollment is limited, so register early. The cost is $80 if received by 8/15/2019, $90 if received by 8/30/2019, and $100 if received after 8/30/2019 (if there is space.) The cost for students with a valid student ID is $50/$60/$70. For more details or to register, visit http://wric.ucdavis.eduand click on RICE WEED COURSE.

If you have questions, contact Whitney Brim-DeForest [wbrimdeforest@ucanr.edu or (530) 822-7515.]

Villar wants probe into distribution of P10 billion as special fund for rice farmers

Published 
By Vanne Elaine Terrazola 
Senator Cynthia Villar is seeking a Senate inquiry on the government’s disbursement of the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF) mandated by the rice tariffication law.
Description: Sen. Cynthia Villar (Senate of the Philippines / MANILA BULLETIN)
Sen. Cynthia Villar (Senate of the Philippines / MANILA BULLETIN)
Five months after the signing of the Republic Act No. 11203, Villar on Tuesday invoked her committee’s oversight function on the law, filing Senate Resolution No. 39 to look into the distribution of the P10-billion special fund for rice farmers.
Villar was recently reelected as the chairman of Senate Committee and Agriculture and Food. She sponsored the law in Senate in the 17th Congress.
Under the RA 11203, P10 billion of the tariff collections on rice imports shall be appropriated annually for rice farmers through various programs that would help increase their production.
Half of the fund shall be allocated to the Philippine Center for Post Harvest Development and Modernization (PhilMech) to provide farmers with rice farm machineries and equipment; 30 percent to the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) to be used for the development, propagation, and promotion of inbred rice seeds to rice farmers, and the organization of rice farmers into seed growers associations engaged in seed production and trade (30 percent); 10 percent for the credit facility that will be managed by the Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP) and the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP); 10 percent for farmers’ training on rice crop production, modern rice farming techniques, seed production, farm mechanization, and knowledge or technology transfer.
In her resolution, Villar cited reports that the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) released in December 2018 P5 billion for the RCEF.
But only P1 billion of the released amount has allegedly been disbursed, Villar said. It was credited to the farmers’ accounts, under the memorandum of understanding entered by the Agricultural Credit Policy Council (ACPC) with the LBP and DBP.
The remaining P4 billion, meanwhile, was still being threshed out by the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) and the Department of Agriculture (DA).
In a press briefing, Villar said the DA “refused” to issue the appropriations to the concerned agencies as it supposedly questioned its release ahead of the signing of the law in February this year.
“Hindi daw nabigay sa mga agencies…Sabi niya (DA) di pa pasa rice tarrification, hindi naman daw para sa Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund. Pero sabi ng DBM, iyon daw ay para sa RCEF. So we will know who’s telling the truth, kasi [their statement are] in conflict,” the senator told reporters.
Aside from the unused fund, Villar also pointed out the delay in the release of PhilMech and PhilRice’s guidelines as to their respective implementation of the RCEF. The guidelines, she said, should have released 15 days after the publication of the law’s implementing rules and regulations.
She also hit as an “irony” the PhilRice’s delay when it earlier announced that the administration was seeking to raise the national average rice yield.
She said the agencies involved in implementation of the law “should be ready by now”, warning that they might miss the planting season on December to March.
“I want them to tell me what would they do — how much are they spending for this, that — that’s very important. We have to make sure that the money is spent properly,” she said in a mix of English and Filipino.
Villar said these issues “are cause for apprehension on whether our rice sector and rice farmers are adequately made ready this early to face the regime of rice import liberalization.”

Villar seeks scrutiny of agencies on implementation of rice tariff law

By: Daphne Galvez - Reporter / @DYGalvezINQ
INQUIRER.net / 03:43 PM July 30, 2019
Description: Villar seeks scrutiny of agencies on implementation of rice tariff law
Sen. Cynthia Villar. INQUIRER.net file photo / CATHY MIRANDA
MANILA, Philippines — Senator Cynthia Villar is seeking to put under Senate scrutiny the concerned government agencies on the proper implementation of the rice tariffication law, which lifts restrictions on rice importation and creates the P10-billion Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF).
Villar, who chairs the Senate committee on agriculture and food, recently filed Senate Resolution No. 39, calling for a Senate investigation into the implementation of the law and monitor government agencies if they are properly implementing the law and funds are being allocated properly.
“I have to exercise my oversight function to make sure they (agencies) follow the law,” Villar said in an interview  at the Senate on Tuesday.
“This is very important, this is the competitiveness of farmers kasi we have liberalized the importation of rice so we have to make our farmers as competitive as soon as possible,” she added.
The Senate investigation will also seek clarification on the reported release by the Department of Budget (DBM) of P5 billion in December 2018, but only P1 billion of which has been credited to the farmers’ accounts.
“Mag iinvestigate ako para malaman kung nasaan dinala ‘yung P5 billion,” the senator said.


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