Thursday, November 21, 2019

21th November,2019 Daily Global Regional Local Rice E-Newsletter



Higgins says new rice agreement with South Korea is "win for South Louisiana"
Posted: 4:05 PM, Nov 20, 2019

Updated: 3:05 AM, Nov 21, 2019

By: KATC News

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Congressman Clay Higgins (R-LA) issued the following statement after U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced that the Trump Administration has reached an agreement with South Korea on market access for American rice.
Under the agreement, which enters into force on January 1, 2020, South Korea will provide access for 132,304 tons of U.S. rice annually. This gives the United States the greatest volume of guaranteed rice market access in South Korea ever with a value of approximately $110 million each year. Additionally, the agreement provides U.S. suppliers with enhanced disciplines related to administration of the U.S. country-specific quota.
"Louisiana is one of the largest producers and exporters of rice in the United States. Since 2017, my office has worked closely with President Trump and his administration to prioritize new export agreements for rice and other agricultural commodities. This agreement to expand market access for rice is a win for South Louisiana farmers, millers, and ports. I'm grateful that the President and his administration are putting America First and working to deliver stronger trade opportunities for American industry."


Rs 2.9K cr paid for ‘non-existent’ paddy

Agencies ‘procure’ more than Haryana’s yearly produce
Posted at: Nov 21, 2019, 7:33 AM; last updated: Nov 21, 2019, 2:27 PM (IST)
Description: Rs 2.9K cr paid for ‘non-existent’ paddy
Sushil Manav
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, November 20
Year after year, Haryana has been ‘purchasing’ more paddy than its farmers actually produce in their fields, thanks to ‘bogus’ procurement by a cartel of rice millers, government procurement agencies and officials of agriculture marketing board.
While official procurement of paddy has yet to end in the state, government figures suggest 70.63 lakh MT of paddy has already been procured this year, out of which 63.81 lakh MT has been purchased by government agencies.
Since the government procures only non-basmati varieties, given to rice millers for custom milling of rice (CMR), the figures suggest 63.81 lakh MT of non-basmati paddy has been procured in Haryana so far.
In Haryana, 13 lakh hectare of land is under paddy crop cultivation — nearly 55 per cent of this is basmati and the rest is non-basmati.
Gurjeet Singh Mann, a farmer from Kirpal Patti village of Sirsa, says because of its water-guzzling ability, farmers in several districts, including Sirsa, have stopped growing non-basmati varieties completely and now these are largely grown in Karnal, Kaithal, Kurukshetra, Ambala and Yamunanagar districts.
Agriculture experts say the average production of non-basmati varieties is 30 quintals per acre (among the best averages) or 75 quintal (7.5 MT) per hectare.
Even if it is assumed that half of the paddy land in Haryana is under cultivation of non-basmati varieties — though state agriculture and farmers’ welfare department officials say it is only 45 per cent of the total paddy land — the total production on 6.5 lakh hectares comes out to 48.75 lakh MT.
However, the agencies have already ‘procured’ 63.81 lakh MT of paddy, which is 15 lakh MT more than the state’s production.
In contrast, private purchase, which is normally of Basmati varieties, is only 6.82 lakh MT in the state this year. Given the fact that the government pays Rs 1,840 per quintal (Rs 18,400 per MT) as minimum support price for the paddy it purchases, this mean a sum of Rs 2,870 crore has been siphoned off from the state exchequer this year for ‘paddy’ which was never there.
Even last year, the government agencies had procured 58 lakh MT of paddy, while almost 47 lakh MT of non-basmati paddy was produced in the state by farmers that year.
After the issue cropped up at a meeting of Council of Ministers on Monday, the state authorities initiated a crackdown on millers and PSD rice was recovered from some mills in Karnal.
Pankaj Agarwal, Director General of the Food, Civil Supplies and Consumers Affairs, Haryana, however said paddy from other states, too, kept coming to the state for procurement because of prompt payments and better facilities for farmers.

316 Karnal rice mills under lens, cops deployed

osted at: Nov 21, 2019, 8:45 AM; last updated: Nov 21, 2019, 8:45 AM (IST)

PDS produce from other states found in units across Haryana
FacebookTwitterEmailPrint
Description: 316 Karnal rice mills under lens, cops deployed
The police deployed at a sugar mill in Karnal. Sayeed Ahmed
rveen Arora
Tribune News Service
Karnal, November 20
After the recovery of PDS (Public Distribution System) rice and gunny bags of other states in mills, 316 rice mills have come under the scanner of the district administration. The police have been deployed at the mills. Not a single bag of rice can be taken out of the mills or brought inside.
Superintendent of Police Surinder Singh Bhoria has confirmed this.
After complaints of bogus procurement of paddy with the connivance of rice millers, traders and government officials, the district authorities, with the help of the police, conducted a raid on mills on the intervening night of Monday and Tuesday.
Deputy Commissioner Vinay Pratap Singh assigned duties to all four Sub-divisional Magistrates (SDMs) to monitor the raids and file reports.
The DC has already confirmed that PDS rice belonging to other states was found in some local mills, but he did not disclose the quantity seized. He said the inspection was underway and would continue for some days.
Gharaunda SDM Gaurav Kumar said officials conducted raids on 29 mills in Gharaunda block and found old PDS gunny bags belonging to other states.
Indri SDM Sumit Sihag said his team checked around 18 mills in his block, but did not find PDS rice from the other state.

Rice millers, however, objected to the raids. Vinod Goel, vice-president, Haryana Rice Millers and Dealers Association, said the millers had requested the district authorities to allow them to send the milled rice to the state government. “We are awaiting a reply,” he added.

FacebookTwitterEmailPrint

COMMENTS

All readers are invited to post comments responsibly. Any messages with foul language or inciting hatred will be deleted. Comments with all capital letters will also be deleted. Readers are encouraged to flag the comments they feel are inappropriate.
The views expressed in the Comments section are of the individuals writing the post. The Tribune does not endorse or support the views in these posts in any manner.



Rice price manipulation won’t be tolerated

12:00 AM, November 21, 2019 / LAST MODIFIED: 12:18 AM, November 21, 2019

 

Warns government as Aman paddy procurement begins

Description: https://assetsds.cdnedge.bluemix.net/sites/default/files/styles/big_2/public/feature/images/rice-1_1.jpg?itok=Er9Iaigp
Photo: Collected
Star Report
The government yesterday sounded a note of warning against unscrupulous traders and said rice price manipulation would not be tolerated as the country had no shortage of the staple.
“It will not be acceptable at any cost if anyone tries to manipulate rice prices … there is no reason to hike the price illegally,” Food Minister Sadhan Chandra Majumder told reporters after a meeting with rice mill owners and traders at the Secretariat.
Meanwhile, the food office yesterday started procuring Aman paddy from farmers in some areas where the harvesting began.
The government has decided to procure 6 lakh tonnes of Aman paddy this Aman season, the highest for the season in the last 24 years, according to the ministry data.
The minister said the paddy price did not increase, so there was no logic in increasing the rice price, reports BSS.
“Farmers would rather have benefited had the paddy price been higher, but unfortunately it did not happen,” he said.
He also said a control room had already been opened under the food ministry and various vigilance teams were monitoring the rice market at the field level.
Asked, Majumder said the ongoing nation-wide transport strike would not impact rice prices for the next 8-10 days as each market across the country has sufficient rice stock.
Moreover, the Directorate of National Consumer Rights Protection has already been asked to take necessary actions if any irregularities come to its notice, he added.
If required, the minister said, the food ministry would conduct mobile court drives to this end.
The country produces nearly 3.44 crore tonnes of rice annually against the demand of almost 2.16 crore tonnes, he said.
At present, the country’s food crops stock is about 14,52,707 tonnes at different warehouses of the government. Of the stock, 11,13,303 tonnes are rice.
Acting food secretary Omar Faruque, Director General of the Department of Food Nazmanara Khanum, Bangladesh Auto Major and Husking Mill Owners Association President Abdur Rashid, Bangladesh Auto Rice Mill Association President Khorshed Alam and representatives from the home, commerce and agriculture ministries, among others, attended the meeting.
AMAN PROCUREMENT
Mosammat Nazmanara Khanum, director general of the Directorate General of Food said, “We have asked all our field offices to begin Aman procurement in areas where the harvest has started. The procurement will start all over the country in phases.”
She said her office had already got the list of growers provided by the Department of Agricultural Extension and the procurement officially started in a couple of areas.
The government is buying the paddy so that the farmers get fair prices for their produce and recoup losses incurred in recent seasons.
This year, the volume of paddy purchase, including that of Boro, would be the second highest during the period, according to data from the food ministry.
The ministry bought the highest quantity of paddy -- 6.70 lakh tonnes -- in the Boro season in 2017.
It had earlier announced that it would start buying Aman paddy at Tk 26 each kg from marginal and small farmers on November 20. The procurement would continue till February 28.
The food ministry estimated the production cost of each kg at Tk 21.55, down from Tk 25.30 the previous year.
After a meeting of the Food Planning and Monitoring Committee, the ministry had said the list of growers would be scrutinised by the upazila procurement committee.
In case the number of farmers exceeds the procurement target, the growers would be chosen through lotteries, the food minister said at a briefing following the meeting on October 31.
The government has also decided to buy 3.5 lakh tonnes of parboiled rice, which would be procured at Tk 36 each kilogram.
The purchase quantity was the same last year.
Besides, 50,000 tonnes of un-boiled rice would be bought at Tk 35 a kg, according to a ministry statement.
Rice purchase from millers would begin on December 1 and continue till February 28, said the statement.
PROCUREMENT IN DINAJPUR
Mahmudul Alam, deputy commissioner of Dinajpur, said the government bought 1,000kgs of Aman paddy from two farmers from the district’s Biral and Nawabganj upazilas.
Mohammad Ashrafuzzaman, district food controller, said the district food office would buy 28,700 metric tonnes of Aman paddy from 13 upazilas of Dinajpur.
A farmer can sell maximum 500kgs of Aman paddy, he said, reports our Dinajpur correspondent.
The number of farmers in the district is around 4.50 lakh. 

Beyond the green revolution

Description: grain productionCredit: CC0 Public Domain
There has been a substantial increase in food production over the last 50 years, but it has been accompanied by a narrowing in the diversity of cultivated crops. New research shows that diversifying crop production can make food supplies more nutritious, reduce resource demand and greenhouse gas emissions, and enhance climate resilience without reducing calorie production or requiring more land.
The Green Revolution—or Third Agricultural Revolution—entailed a set of research technology transfer initiatives introduced between 1950 and the late 1960s. This markedly increased agricultural production across the globe, and particularly in the developing world, and promoted the use of high-yielding seed varieties, irrigation, fertilizers, and machinery, while emphasizing maximizing food calorie production, often at the expense of nutritional and environmental considerations. Since then, the diversity of cultivated crops has narrowed considerably, with many producers opting to shift away from more nutritious cereals to high-yielding crops like rice. This has in turn led to a triple burden of malnutrition, in which one in nine people in the world are undernourished, one in eight adults are obese, and one in five people are affected by some kind of micronutrient deficiency. According to the authors of a new study, strategies to enhance the sustainability of food systems require the quantification and assessment of tradeoffs and benefits across multiple dimensions.
In their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers from IIASA, and several institutions across the US and India, quantitatively assessed the outcomes of alternative production decisions across multiple objectives using India's rice dominated monsoon cereal production as an example, as India was one of the major beneficiaries of Green Revolution technologies.
Using a series of optimizations to maximize nutrient production (i.e., protein and iron), minimize greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and resource use (i.e., water and energy), or maximize resilience to climate extremes, the researchers found that diversifying crop production in India would make the nation's food supply more nutritious, while reducing irrigation demand, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions. The authors specifically recommend replacing some of the rice crops that is currently being cultivated in the country with nutritious coarse cereals like millets and sorghum, and argue that such diversification would also enhance the country's climate resilience without reducing calorie production or requiring more land. Researchers from IIASA contributed the design of the optimization model and the energy and GHG intensity assessments.
"To make agriculture more sustainable, it's important that we think beyond just increasing food supply and also find solutions that can benefit nutrition, farmers, and the environment. This study shows that there are real opportunities to do just that. India can sustainably enhance its food supply if farmers plant less rice and more nutritious and environmentally friendly crops such as finger millet, pearl millet, and sorghum," explains study lead author Kyle Davis, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Data Science Institute at Columbia University, New York.
The authors found that planting more coarse cereals could on average increase available protein by 1% to 5%; increase iron supply by between 5% and 49%; increase climate resilience (1% to 13% fewer calories would be lost during times of drought); and reduce GHG emissions by 2% to 13%. The diversification of crops would also decrease the demand for irrigation water by 3% to 21% and reduce energy use by 2% to 12%, while maintaining calorie production and using the same amount of cropland.
"One key insight from this study was that despite coarse grains having lower yields on average, there are enough regions where this is not the case. A non-trivial shift away from rice can therefore occur without reducing overall production," says study coauthor Narasimha Rao, a researcher in the IIASA Energy Program, who is also on the faculty of the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
The authors point out that the Indian Government is currently promoting the increased production and consumption of these nutri-cereals—efforts that they say will be important to protect farmers' livelihoods and increase the cultural acceptability of these grains. With nearly 200 million undernourished people in India, alongside widespread groundwater depletion and the need to adapt to climate change, increasing the supply of nutri-cereals may be an important part of improving the country's food security.


Rice yields could plummet 40% by 2100 due to climate change: Stanford University

At least 2 billion people, especially in Asia, could be affected due to the scarcity
By DTE Staff
Last Updated: Wednesday 20 November 2019
Global yields of rice, the world’s largest staple food crop, could plummet by as much as 40 per cent by 2100, affecting two billion people, a new study by Stanford University in the United States has said.
The plummeting of the yields would be caused by increasing temperatures. Moreover, changes in the chemistry of the soil due to increased temperatures would cause the rice grown to contain twice as much toxic arsenic than the rice that is consumed today, the study has added.
To arrive at their conclusions, the researchers grew a medium-sized rice variety in soil from California’s rice-growing region (Sacramento Valley). The experiment took place in greenhouses, the temperatures of which were based on a five degree Celsius temperature increase.
Carbon dioxide levels were increased to twice as much as what they are today. Both, the temperature of the greenhouse and the carbon dioxide level were based on estimates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The scientists found that because of the higher temperatures, the inherent arsenic in the soil was destabilised and taken up by the rice plants. The arsenic went on to inhibit the absorption of nutrients and decrease the plants’ growth and development, causing yields to plummet by 40 per cent.
The researchers said the development was worrying not just because rice is the food of half of the world’s population but also because the increased levels of arsenic could pose health threats to adults and infants alike.
Consistent exposure to arsenic causes skin lesions, cancers, exacerbation of lung disease and death. Since rice is also the first food that is given to infants in many cultures because it is low in allergens, infants are especially at risk.
However, the scientists expressed the hope that given the technology available today, rice varieties could be grown which would address these threats.
The research was published on November 1 in the journal Nature Communications.

U.S., South Korea reach rice trade deal

by George Jared (gjared@talkbusiness.net)  
Rice produced in Arkansas and the rest of the country can soon be sold in South Korea. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced Tuesday (Nov. 19) an agreement with the government of South Korea on market access for U.S. rice.
Under the agreement, Korea will provide access for 132,304 tons of U.S. rice annually, with an annual value of approximately $110 million. Korea also agreed to important disciplines to ensure transparency and predictability around the tendering and auctioning for U.S. rice.
“Exports are critical for the economic health of the U.S. rice industry, with half our crop being exported every year. Agreements like this, that expand opportunities for U.S. rice producers in important markets, are critical to introduce foreign customers to the bounty of goods produced by America’s farmers,” Perdue said.
In 2014, the United States, Australia, China, Thailand, and Vietnam entered into negotiations with Korea when its special treatment for rice market access under the World Trade Organization (WTO) expired.
As a result of these negotiations, Korea agreed to include in its WTO Schedule a 408,700-ton tariff-rate quota for rice imports with a 5% in-quota duty and a 513% above-quota duty. Of that 408,700 tons, Korea will allocate 388,700 tons of rice to country-specific quotas under a Plurilateral Agreement with the United States, Australia, China, Thailand and Vietnam. The remaining 20,000 tons will be administered on a global basis, which U.S. suppliers can also bid for.
Additionally, the agreement provides U.S. suppliers with enhanced disciplines related to the administration of the U.S. country-specific quota. The agreement will enter into force on January 1, 2020.
Arkansas, which produces about half the nation’s rice, will benefit from this agreement Arkansas Rice Executive Director Lauren Waldrip told Talk Business & Politics. During the last decade, the state has averaged about 1.35 million rice acres each year, according to USDA.
“After nearly five years of working towards a new agreement, we are pleased to see this deal finalized. The industry will certainly benefit from this arrangement, which increases consumption of U.S. rice and guarantees this market through the U.S. country-specific quota. We are encouraged and hopeful that the administration will complete other agreements such as these in the future,” Waldrip said.
Individual companies involved in rice production and distribution were also pleased that an agreement had been reached with South Korea, one of the top rice consuming countries in Asia.
“After nearly five years of work, the rice industry and the U.S. government have finalized an agreement with Korea for a country-specific quota for U.S. rice,” said Kevin McGilton, Vice President Government Affairs for Stuttgart-based Riceland Foods. “We thank Ambassador Lighthizer and Secretary Perdue for their hard work to finalize the deal. U.S. agriculture is dealing with very uncertain times and this country-specific quota brings certainty in a high-value market for U.S. rice farmers and exporters.”

House will review proposal to repeal rice tariffication law


Description: https://businessmirror.com.ph/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/broader01-103119-696x411.jpgThis file photo shows an assortment of commercial rice on sale at a grocery store in Antipolo City.
THE leadership of the House of Representatives on Tuesday said it will study the proposals repealing the rice tariffication law (RTL).
This after Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano and Majority Leader Ferdinand Martin Romualdez along with other House leaders received the 50,000 signatures gathered by Bantay Bigas calling for the repeal of the law, which took effect just last March.
Cayetano said that they are open to the proposal and would study all options to help farmers affected by the RTL, who have groaned under deep cuts to their income with the surge in imports as a result of liberalization.
Romualdez, chairman of the House Committee on Rules, also vowed to hear the proposal of other lawmakers to address the impact of RTL, saying “everyone deserves to be heard.”
On February 2019, Republic Act (RA) 11203 entitled, “An Act Liberalizing the Importation, Exportation and Trading of Rice, Lifting for the Purpose the Quantitative Import Restriction on Rice, and For Other Purposes” was enacted to help support the local rice industry specifically by creating a “Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund.”
For his part, House Committee on Agriculture and Food Chairman Wilfrido Mark Enverga said suspension of rice importation will help farmers against losses due to the RTL.
“Definitely a call for suspension of rice importation and/or raising the safeguard measures will ease the impacts of the rice liberalization law,” he added.

December discussions

According to Enverga, his committee will deliberate all the proposals amending, as well as repealing the RTL next month.
“There are bills repealing and amending the RTL. These measures will be scheduled this December for deliberations,” Enverga said.
“It is a point of consideration for President Duterte. We will welcome any measure that will cushion the immediate impacts of the law to our rice farmers,” he added. Currently, there are five pending bills and resolutions repealing and amending Republic Act 11203 or the RTL.
Last week, Bantay Bigas and the National Federation of Peasant Women (Amihan) submitted a petition to the House urging the leadership of the chamber to repeal the RTL.
The groups said their petition was signed by 50,000 farmers in top rice-producing provinces, including Nueva Ecija, Isabela, Pangasinan, Cagayan, Iloilo, Camarines Sur, Tarlac and Leyte.
“We strongly hope that the House of Representatives heeds the noble demands of the Filipino people for the attainment of national food security based on self-sufficiency and self-reliance, free from import dependence and grounded on strengthened tenurial rights of rice farmers in the country,” the petition said.

Reiterated

Meanwhile, House Committee on Ways and Means Chairman Joey Salceda on Tuesday reiterated that the national government has three options, including requesting Congress to impose quatitative restrictions, to stop farmers from incurring losses due to RTL.
According to Salceda, the sudden drop in palay prices is due to increased local harvest and the huge volume of imported rice with the RTL.
One of the options, Salceda said, is for President Duterte to ask Congress for special powers to impose the quantitative restrictions, which was repealed in the passage of RTL last year.
With the surge of rice imports and injury to domestic industry the other option the government may invoke, Salceda said, is Republic Act 8800 or the Safeguards Law to impose 30 percent to 80 percent tariff on imported rice outside the Minimum Access Volume (MAV) of 350,000 metric tons.  “RA 8800 is well recognized under our commitments with the WTO [World Trade Organization] and the provisional measure has a maximum period of one year,” he said.
The third option, Salceda said, is for the government to provide cash transfers to marginal small-lot farmers and concessional loans to big rice farmers. The lawmaker said a total of 2.1 million farmers will benefit from these options

Repeal Rice Tariffication Law'

Mike Alquinto, ABS-CBN News
Posted at Nov 20 2019 07:27 PM
Description: 'Repeal Rice Tariffication Law'
Members of various farmers groups hold a protest against the Rice Tariffication Law in front of the National Economic and Development Authority's main gate in Pasig City on Wednesday. President Duterte ordered the Department of Agriculture to suspend the importation of rice to avoid a “food crisis,” months after signing into law a rice tariffication bill which lifted restrictions on rice imports. 

US, S. Korea Reach Annual Rice Export Deal Worth More Than $100Mln - Trade Representative

 (@FahadShabbir)  
Description: US, S. Korea Reach Annual Rice Export Deal Worth More Than $100Mln - Trade Representative

The United States and South Korea reached a deal to allow more than $100 million of American rice exports into the Asian country each year, the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) said on Tuesday

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th November, 2019) The United States and South Korea reached a deal to allow more than $100 million of American rice exports into the Asian country each year, the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) said on Tuesday.
"Under the agreement, Korea will provide access for 132,304 tons of US rice annually, with an annual value of approximately $110 million," the USTR said in a statement. "Korea also agreed to important disciplines to ensure transparency and predictability around the tendering and auctioning for US rice."
Rice has been South Korea's most important agricultural crop and staple grain but Seoul's policies had isolated its market in the past from the global rice markets, the US Department of Agriculture said separately in a report.
In 2014, the United StatesAustraliaChinaThailand, and Vietnam entered into negotiations with Korea when its special treatment for rice market access under the World Trade Organization (WTO) expired.
"Exports are critical for the economic health of the US rice industry, with half our crop being exported every year," US Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue was quoted as saying in the USTR statement. "Agreements like this, that expand opportunities for US rice producers in important markets, are critical to introduce foreign customers to the bounty of goods produced by America's farmers."
Following the WTO negotiations, Korea agreed to include in its WTO schedule a 408,700-ton tariff-rate quota for rice imports with a five percent in-quota duty and a 513-percent above-quota duty.
Of the 408,700 tons, Korea will allocate 388,700 tons of rice into country-specific quotas under a plurilateral pact with the United StatesAustraliaChinaThailand and Vietnam. The remaining 20,000 tons will be administered on a global basis, which U.S. suppliers can also bid for.


Food Exports Up By 16.21%, Imports Down 20.34% In Four Months Of FY2019-20

Description: Food exports  up by 16.21%, imports down 20.34% in four months of FY2019-20

Food group exports from the country during first four months of current financial year increased by 16.21%, where as imports of the food commodities into the country decreased by 20.34% as compared to the corresponding period of last year

ISLAMABAD, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 20th Nov, 2019 ) :Food group exports from the country during first four months of current financial year increased by 16.21%, where as imports of the food commodities into the country decreased by 20.34% as compared to the corresponding period of last year.
The imports of the food group came down to $1.583 billion during the period from July-October, 2019-20 from $1.987 billion of the same period of last year, according the data released by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.
During the period under review, the imports of milk cream and milk for infants reduced by 33.41%, tea by 28.16%, spices.08%, palm oil 18.64% and sugar by 26.55% respectively.
Besides, the imports of pulses in period under review also decreased by 23.33%, and all other food items by 20.32%, the data reveled.
On the other hand, the exports which witnessed about 16.21% growth in last four months of current financial year reached to $1.
360 billion as against the exports of $1.170 billion of same period of last year, it added.
The food items that observed positive growth during the period under review included rice by 43.76%, basmati-rice 55.32%, other rice 36.83%, fish and fish preparations 18.11% respectively.
The exports of fruits grew by 3.72%, vegetables by 19%, tobacco 335.20, sugar by 9.63%, meat and meat products 53.57% in four months of current financial year.
On month on month basis, the exports of food also grew by 22.50% in October2019 as compared the exports of the same month of last year as food commodities worth $375.466 million exported during the period under review as compared the exports of corresponding period of last year.
meanwhile, the imports of food group into the country during the month of October, decreased by 8.08% as it was recorded at $486.088 million as against the imports of $528.826 million of same month of last year, the data added.


‘Hybrid rice way out of rice-imports trap’



Description: https://businessmirror.com.ph/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/download-11.jpgTHE Philippines could stop depending on rice imports if it steps up investments in the production of hybrid rice, according to an industry expert.Dr. Frisco Malabanan, senior technical consultant at SL Agritech Corp., said the estimated 7 percent to 10 percent shortfall in local rice output could be drastically cut if the country would produce hybrid rice in about 1.5 million hectares. This, he pointed out, should be coupled with the correct support in terms of
fertilizer and irrigation.
“My recommendation, since rice is the staple food of Filipinos, is that there should be really support for hybrid rice production. This technology has been proven and tested to give farmers a 30-percent increase in income as it could double or even more than double their yield per hectare,” Malabanan told the BusinessMirror during the first episode of its Farm Fridays podcast. (https://businessmirror.podbean.com/e/farm-fridays-with-jennifer-ng-hybrid-rice-technology-with-frisco-malabanan/ )
Malabanan noted that it is difficult for the Philippines to be dependent on other countries for its rice supply due to the thin volume traded in the world market and volatility in global production.
“Our concern is the thin supply in the world market. But right now we have solutions to produce the sufficient amount of rice requirement of the Filipinos,” he said. “[Investing in hybrid rice production] will ensure that Filipinos would have sufficient rice supply whatever happens to our trade partners,” he added.
Malabanan, who is also a technical adviser to the Department of Agriculture’s hybrid rice program, proposed that the government provide farmers with direct cash assistance so that they could shift to hybrid rice production.
“The DA and the government should invest in our farmers. If the government could give billions-worth conditional cash transfer to the poor, then it can also give to farmers planting in the targeted 1.5 million hectares for hybrid rice,” he said.
“For example, you just give them P5,000 per hectare for the additional costs incurred for seeds and other inputs. It’s just a small amount to give farmers the proper support, so that they will be able to produce the country’s total rice requirement,” he added. Malabanan said he is not against rice importation but it would be better if the country’s staple requirement would be ensured through local output.
“There’s nothing wrong about rice importation, it’s part of the open market and globalization. But what I mean is that, given that rice is our staple food, we must see to it that we have enough production for Filipinos,” he said.
The DA is eyeing to expand the adoption of hybrid rice in the country through its annual P7-billion rice program to improve farmers’ productivity and income.
The country’s rice production from January to September declined by nearly 5 percent to 11.32 million metric tons from 11.909 million metric tons due to reduced harvest area, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority. 

Suspension of rice imports won't impact inflation, says Diokno

ABS-CBN News
Posted at Nov 20 2019 07:00 PM
MANILA – President Duterte's suspension of rice importation is unlikely to affect inflation since there is enough supply during the harvest season and pending imports are expected to arrive, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor Benjamin Diokno said on Wednesday.
“Hindi naman makakaapekto kasi marami nang imports na darating pa lang eh, tapos concern nga is harvest season, baka lalong bumaba yung presyo,” Diokno told reporters.
(It won’t have an effect since we have a lot of imports that will be arriving. The concern is it’s harvest season, so prices might even go lower)
Inflation stayed below the government's 2 to 4 percent target range for 3 straight months after inflationary pressures in 2018, including the shortage in rice supply, were addressed. 
The Philippines is also likely to enjoy “a nice Christmas” in terms of consumer prices with lower global oil forecasts, Diokno told reporters. 
“And on prices naman, sinusewerte pa rin tayo, mababa pa rin ang long term forecast of oil prices, sinuswerte tayo all the way. So we’ll have a nice Christmas,” he added.
(On prices, we’re lucky since the long term forecast of oil prices remain low. We’re lucky, so we’ll have a nice Christmas)
Diokno said “there’s no way” the government will turn its back on the rice tariffication since it has already been enacted into law. 
President Rodrigo Duterte on Tuesday night ordered Agriculture Sec. William Dar to suspend rice importation. 
-- with a report from Bruce Rodriguez, ABS-CBN News

Halting rice imports has no legal basis’

By Bernadette D. Nicolas, Jasper Emmanuel Y. Arcalas & Cai U. Ordinario
PRESIDENT Duterte may be inviting lawsuits as there is no legal basis for his decision—announced verbally in a late-Tuesday press conference—to prohibit the private sector’s importation of rice during harvest, according to an expert.
Apart from this, former Agriculture Secretary Leonardo Montemayor said the President’s order to suspend imports at this time will no longer help farmers, as harvest of the wet season crop is almost over.
Instead of suspending imports, economists and legal experts told the BusinessMirror that the government may impose safeguard duties, a trade remedy that is allowed by the World Trade Organization (WTO).
The President’s verbal order to ban rice imports was made as calls mounted for the government to stem the surge of imports—tracked since the rice trade liberalization law took effect in March—that farmers blamed for the plunge in their incomes as farm-gate prices of palay have hit record lows.
Lawyer Michael Ll. Yusingco, nonresident research fellow of the Ateneo School of Government, said on Wednesday he cannot recall any law allowing the President to stop the importation of rice.
“As the head of the Executive branch of government, the President could have the authority to prohibit his administration from importing rice. But absent any national statute authorizing him to do so, the President cannot just prevent private entities from lawfully importing rice,”   Yusingco said in an e-mail to the BusinessMirror.
He said the government may face lawsuits if it will stop the private sector from importing rice, a move which could affect the supply of the staple in the domestic market.
“Preventing private business from importing rice without the proper authority can open the government to legal action. More important, it may have an adverse impact on the rice supply market, which may ultimately affect consumers. It is never a good move for government to intervene in private matters without justification and proper authority,” said Yusingco.
Montemayor agreed with Yusingco, saying the rice trade liberalization (RTL) law does not give the President the power to suspend rice imports. He noted that the law only allows the President to hike tariffs to effectively limit the purchases of traders.
The BusinessMirror reported that Republic Act 11203, or the RTL law, effectively dismantled the government’s right to impose quantitative restriction on rice imports as a trade remedy.
“On the matter of stopping importation, the government could be questioned because under the law, [rice trade] is already liberalized. The government cannot just stop imports under the new law,” said Montemayor. “What is the legal basis of the government to stop imports?”

Legal remedies

Experts said there are other legal remedies outside of suspending imports.
“We’ve been proposing for some time now the general safeguard protection which has the same effect of stopping additional rice importation. Unfortunately, our economic managers rejected that proposal,” said Montemayor, who is also chairman of nongovernment organization Federation of Free Farmers.
“Imposing safeguard duties would discourage importers from bringing in more rice to the country because our total imported volume is already over and above our requirement,” he added.
The Philippine Chamber of Agriculture and Food Inc. (Pcafi) reiterated its call for the government to impose special safeguard (SSG) measures on rice imports as a legal remedy to limit imports.
Pcafi said the SSG may still be implemented by January or February next year to protect farmers during the summer harvest season.
“This is to ensure imports will not coincide with harvest by dry season  in March to April 2020, the peak harvest of the two-season crop. It will help support farm-gate price of palay [unhusked rice] to at least P17 per kilogram,” Pcafi President Danilo V. Fausto said in a statement on Wednesday.
“It takes 30 to 60 days to implement the law.  So it should be issued January to February. A suspension is against the prevailing law on ‘no QR’ [quantative restriction],” Fausto added.
The founding President and Chairman of the Society Towards Reinforcing Inherent Viability for Enrichment Foundation Inc. Leonardo A. Gonzales said the government can consider non-tariff measures (NTMs) to somehow help local farmers recover from the steep decline in farmgate prices.
While NTMs are the prerogative of the administration, former Tariff Commissioner George Manzano said the government should be able to provide a solid basis for this.
Manzano said if the government imposes NTMs, the Philippines must officially notify the World Trade Organization (WTO) to ensure that the country is not violating any of its commitments.
“Depends on the type of NTMs, provided the administration can defend it objectively. For example, sanitary measures provided that there is a justification. But government has to notify WTO. Not easy to use arbitrary NTMs,” said Manzano in an SMS to BusinessMirror.
Economist Maria Ella C. Oplas urged the government to amend RA 11203 to involve the National Food Authority in the monitoring of rice prices.

Chuck ‘BBB’

Ateneo Eagle Watch Senior Fellow Leonardo A. Lanzona Jr. said he believes the President’s decision will not yield the results that he is hoping for, and would only lead to suffering for consumers.
“Suspending the [implementation] of the law will just bring back the old system and remove the gains achieved by our consumers. Any kind of trade restriction will not solve the problem. The solution is a comprehensive reform of the agricultural sector,” said Lanzona.
“[Government] must channel resources to rural areas and deal with the problems there. Forget ‘Build, Build, Build’ [BBB], and work on the basic needs like food, education and health,” he added.
Lanzona said that while it was true that a significant amount of funds have been set aside for the government’s ambitious infrastructure program, the impact on the economy and farmers has been “underwhelming.”
He said the infrastructure program would have a greater impact if rural areas received more projects. Thus far, Lanzona noted that the program “has no effect on the lives of farmers.”
“We have seen growth in the previous quarter but this is an empty achievement,” he said.
Economist Rene Ofreneo told BusinessMirror that abandoning “dubious” BBB projects would free up necessary resources that will hasten the development and boost the growth of the farm sector.
An example of these dubious projects, Ofreneo said, are connecting bridges between islands, as well as the “expensive” subway project in Makati. He said these projects limit the government’s ability to help other sectors of society.
He said abandoning the dubious projects is a better alternative than suspending rice imports at this time, when importers have already stocked up on the staple.
“The President, given his awesome power, can ask the big importers listed by the BusinessMirror’s report [See “Pre- and post-rice trade lib law, big traders gaming farmer groups,” in the BusinessMirror, October 31, 2019] to calibrate any importation program based on local production and harvesting schedule,” said Ofreneo.
“What the government is doing is fire fighting,” he said. “The lesson is that any major policy requires a comprehensive program of adjustment measures to smoothen the process. In this case, [the goal should have been] not to sacrifice domestic palay production and palay producers.”
Gonzales said the government should pursue sustainable agriculture. This means going for programs and projects that will help make agricultural value chains more efficient.
“The problem is that infrastructure projects, such as farm to market roads, are not linked [to specific] commodities,” said Gonzales.
Money for procurement
Aside from suspending imports, the President also ordered the purchase of all unhusked rice produced by local
farmers.
While Yusingco sees nothing wrong with this move, he said this cannot be a long-term policy as it can distort market dynamics.
He also noted that government’s “ultimate goal” should be to make rice farmers competitive and allow them to meet not just the requirements of domestic consumers but also that of the export market.
“This approach of government buying directly from rice farmers has to be well-thought of and well-timed. It cannot be just a knee-jerk response on the part of the administration. But it can be a part of the economic and social safety net package to help rice farmers cope with the implementation of [RA 11203],” he said.
Oplas, who is also an economics professor at the De La Salle University, expressed concern over the feasibility and the impact of the President’s pronouncement to buy all the produce of local farmers.
“One, where will the government get the budget to buy? New sets of taxes? Two, if government buys, they will now create an artificial floor price,” she said.
The creation of an artificial floor price, Oplas explained, could lead to market distortion and may make room for corruption as the government can sell rice at a lower price

‘Stopping rice imports to hurt poor families’

Neda chief warns against reversing gains of liberalized trade regime
By: Ben O. de Vera - Reporter / @bendeveraINQ
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 04:11 AM November 20, 2019
Description: https://business.inquirer.net/files/2019/11/19rice.jpg
INQUIRER file photo
The country’s chief economist on Tuesday warned against reversing the gains made under the liberalized rice trade regime, under which he claimed lower prices redounded to the benefit of poor families.
Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto M. Pernia told reporters Tuesday that the government had already put in place measures to alleviate the impact of the Rice Tariffication Law—which removed the import quota—on palay farmers.
Pernia, who heads the state planning agency National Economic and Development Authority (Neda), said the Cabinet approved to give away about P3 billion in cash to farmers whose livelihoods were affected by the drop in palay prices amid a surge in imports.
The P3-billion funding will come from the tariff collection from imported rice that exceeded the P10-billion Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF).
If the government would backtrack on rice importation, Pernia warned, “we will be back to where we were last year,” referring to the high inflation episode partly caused by the domestic rice supply bottlenecks that pushed retail prices up.
When rice prices rise, “the poor will suffer,” Pernia added, as the bulk of Filipino families’ expenditures go to food items.
“Inflation for the 30-percent poorest [households] has come down to 0.9 percent—the much-bigger majority is benefitting,” Pernia said.
The latest Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data showed that the consumer price index (CPI) for the bottom 30-percent income households in October fell to a 46-month low of 0.9 percent year-on-year as food prices and cost of utilities declined year-on-year.
In a press conference last Monday, International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission chief Thomas Helbling described rice tariffication as a “major step forward” as he said it had been long overdue.
“I think rice tariffication—that is to move from import quotas to import tariffs—is helping the broader population. We would also know that, of course, rice farmers may suffer from this but the government has instituted income support for affected farmers,” Helbling told reporters.
The Action for Economic Reforms (AER) has also strongly urged President Duterte not to suspend the implementation of the RTL, noting that data from the PSA presented evidence that retail prices of rice have fallen significantly to the great benefit of the 100 million consumers of rice in the country, including the poorest of the poor who consider rice a basic necessity.
While the falling prices of palay is a growing concern, it said that any policy pronouncements implying the erosion of the RTL would create uncertainty over the law’s implementation and is precisely the cause for the lack of stability in palay prices. “Rice traders who anticipate a reversal of the law are hoarding rice, depressing farm gate prices to the detriment of Filipino rice farmers. Halting implementation would only play into their hands. To counter this, strong signals must be sent as regards the certainty and consistency of this reform,” it pointed out.
AER said the government must not renege on its policy commitment toward making rice more accessible and affordable for Filipino consumers while putting in place strategic measures that would address the farmers’ plight.
For one, the RCEF, which will be sourced from tariff collections on rice imports, will provide the means toward increasing farmers’ productivity and incomes in the long run. In the meantime, AER said the government can directly procure rice from local farmers in order to buoy prices. AER said it also strongly supported using the tariff collections in excess of P10 billion for the purpose of direct and conditional cash transfers to the rice farmers to provide transitional aid and as an incentive for farmers to increase productivity as they continue farming.
AER called on Mr. Duterte to stay the course in implementing the RTL and the swift implementation of mitigating measures to address the impact on rice farmers.

How long will Delhi gasp for breath?

Published: November 20, 2019 2:30:54 AM

The Kharif paddy crop sowing cannot be advanced—the existing Preservation of Subsoil Water Act in Punjab and Haryana can’t be relaxed because of a fast depleting water table (studies say it is reducing at 0.3 to 1 metre/year). So we need technological alternatives to stubble burning.

Description: Delhi, Delhi pollution, Delhi pollution news,  Delhi pollution news, Diwali, stubble burning
Scientists working in this field, environmentalists, farmers’ organisations and agricultural economists have suggested responsible solutions. (ANI)
By Arabinda K Padhee
& ML Jat
Delhi is considered one of the most polluted cities in the world. Air pollution is caused due to rising number of vehicles, industrial pollution, construction activities and a lessening green cover not commensurate with rapid urbanisation. Air quality from mid-October to mid-November is worst, often slipping from severe to hazardous category. A major reason ascribed to poor air quality is stubble burning in Punjab, Haryana and parts of UP. The situation gets compounded by lighting of firecrackers on Diwali. Regulatory actions in Delhi (odd-even scheme) or cajoling farmers through sops (or drastic actions) have not proved successful. The National Green Tribunal (NGT) and State Pollution Control Boards have issued several directions to states to control stubble burning, but without noticeable outcomes.
Are there no solutions to tackle stubble burning? Scientists working in this field, environmentalists, farmers’ organisations and agricultural economists have suggested responsible solutions. The authors have first-hand experience in the field; they interacted with scientists, policymakers, farmers adopting prescribed technological solutions, and analysed the body of ‘limited’ literature on the subject in the past few years. Based on these, an actionable framework, in short and medium to long term, is suggested that needs political will and cooperation of all the stakeholders, mainly the farming community.
How did the problem start?
Earlier, farmers of Punjab and Haryana used to grow three crops in a year: short-duration paddy (termed Sathi) in May that was harvested by mid-July; during Kharif (rainy season), farmers would go for late-sown high-yielding paddy, for which free irrigation and procurement by government agencies were favourable (few farmers started cultivating Basmati rice during this season); and after harvest of Kharif paddy, high-yielding varieties of wheat were grown in the winter. Cultivation of Sathi was possible because of plenty shallow groundwater to irrigate the water-guzzling crop even during peak summer. But unsustainable cropping practices led to a steep decline in water table, prompting both Punjab and Haryana to enact laws to ban early transplanting of paddy. As per law, paddy nurseries can only be started from May 10 and transplanting from June 13 in Punjab (dates for Haryana are May 15 and June 15, respectively).
These fixed dates led to delayed harvest of the crop to October, a time when farmers are supposed to prepare land for wheat. Although tech solutions are available, farmers take the easiest option to clear the fields, by burning the stubble/residue. And then there are other factors—increased straw production surpassing the demand of fodder, drastic decline in agricultural workforce (labour) and increased mechanised harvesting operations.
What are the solutions?
The Kharif paddy crop sowing cannot be advanced—the existing Preservation of Subsoil Water Act in Punjab and Haryana can’t be relaxed because of a fast depleting water table (studies say it is reducing at 0.3 to 1 metre/year). So we need technological alternatives to stubble burning.
Short-term solutions: Happy seeder is a tractor-mounted machine that sows (wheat) seeds without the need to till the field or remove existing paddy straw. The remains of rice crop residue act as mulch, conserving soil moisture and improving soil health. Research shows such climate-smart practices lead to reduced carbon dioxide emissions, enhanced micro-biome activities in the soil, and less weed infestation. Happy seeder and implements like straw-spreader or straw management system (SMS) have been field tested. Governments (Union and states) have encouraged farmers with subsidies to adopt these. The usage of happy seeders has incrementally gone up, but hasn’t caught up fast enough to make a perceptible dent on stubble burning. The cost of machines (`1.5 lakh and above) is often cited as a reason for low adoption. Business models with lead farmers, farmers’ cooperatives and service providers through custom-hiring centres have to be developed to provide machinery on demand. Massive awareness campaigns and capacity-building activities need to be undertaken for all the stakeholders. Initially, subsidies on machines may be raised and farm cooperatives and specialised start-ups may be encouraged to operate custom-hiring centres. Gram Panchayats may also be made responsible to take up such activities. Banks and financial institutions should provide capital assistance to desirous individuals/groups.
Machinery would displace manual labour. It could, therefore, be suggested to engage agricultural labourers in the collection of paddy straws for production of manure and other purposes. Wages of these labourers could be met from the MGNREGA funds by Panchayati Raj institutions. This will generate employment.
A new cadre of trained human resource would be needed to provide technical know-how to farmers. For this, attracting youth in agriculture would greatly help.
Till kharif paddy is substituted with other crops, cultivation of short-duration rice varieties suited for direct-seeded-rice (DSR) method coupled with micro-irrigation could be tried as an alternative. DSR paddy takes less time for establishment and there is no transplanting shock to the plant. This method may significantly save irrigation water and advance the growing season (as no transplanting is done). This would widen the gap between paddy harvest and wheat sowing, thus potentially reducing burning problem.
Baling of straw by suitable machines can clear the field for next sowing, and scientific binding of straw can be employed to address fodder scarcity in nearby areas.
Adoption of zero-tillage farming for crop residue management has been advocated by ICAR and CIMMYT. Zero-tillage using happy seeder alone has the potential to solve half of the residue burning issues. It reduces GHG emissions, and also ensures remunerative income to farmers.
Medium to long-term solutions: Phasing out current subsidies provided on piecemeal basis and transitioning towards a holistic farming approach through provisioning of payments for ecosystem services will provide farmers better opportunities to take wise decisions in accordance to their local circumstance. In addition to conservation agriculture, high-value crops like fruits, vegetables, maize, soybean, etc, could be replaced in stubble burning areas. Climate-resilient crops like sorghum and millet (nutri-cereals) could be planned.
Processing infrastructure to support a vibrant value chain linking to the market would, however, be needed. Also, making pellets/briquettes from paddy straw for their use in (thermal) power plants, use of stubble in bio-refineries (bio-ethanol), biomass gasification, etc, have been suggested as solutions to utilise paddy straw.
Non-basmati paddy cultivation is preferred by farmers, mainly because of assured procurement under MSP. A gradual reduction of the common paddy area and substitution with other crops (including Basmati) may reduce environmental footprint. Subsidies for power/irrigation water, fertilisers, etc, have compounded the problem. Diversification of existing cropping system is also fraught with high political dynamics. A strong will from top political leadership (maybe with a direction from the judiciary) may change the behaviour of all actors in the policy arena.
India is world’s third-largest emitter of GHGs. As per a report submitted by the government of India to the UNFCCC, crop-residue burning accounts for 2% of GHG emissions within the agriculture sector. Effective mitigation measures with contextual adaptation practices as suggested above would reduce stubble burning, thus lessening the load on the environment and possibly making the Delhi air cleaner.
Padhee is country director, India, ICRISAT; Jat is principal scientist, CIMMYT. Views are personal.
Get live Stock Prices from BSE and NSE and latest NAV, portfolio of Mutual Funds, calculate your tax by Income Tax Calculator, know market’s Top GainersTop Losers & Best Equity Funds. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

Norm Borlaug Gave Us The Green Revolution: What's Next?
By Hank Campbell | November 20th 2019 02:31 AM
Bottom of Form
Dr. Norm Borlaug, the "father of the Green Revolution", is credited with saving a billion lives using agricultural science, and for the last 50 years he and his successors debunked the Malthusian claims of cynics like Paul Ehrlich, John Holdren, and their modern-day acolytes like Bill McKibben, Michael Pollan, and Naomi Oreskes.

When Holdren and Ehrlich (and the other Ehrlich) were trying to drum up support for mandatory birth control and a world government to enforce it(1), Borlaug and the science community quietly made farming more efficient than ever. Today, even the poorest people in most of the world can afford to be fat, something never possible before, and that is thanks to the legacy of Dr. Borlaug.

But what's next? Can we do for everything what they did for cereals?

It certainly seems possible. With older techniques like organic-certified mutagenesis we may have hit caps on growing food under inhospitable conditions, but genetic engineering, RNAi, and now CRISPS-Cas9 there is reason for optimism that everyone will be able to have a variety of locally grown, affordable, diverse foods.

But first, baby steps.


Drs. Norman and Julie Borlaug (his granddaughter). Credit: AgriLife via Flickr. Go here to read Organic Industry A-Team stooge Tom Philpott attack her for supporting science. The reputation of Grist has gotten much better since he took his conspiracy theories to Mother Jones.

A recent paper in PNAS found that the next phase in the Green Revolution may be ready to begin. Whereas the first phase was to get people enough of anything, thanks to science and technology a country like India can now diversify beyond the “rice dominated monsoon cereal production ” that Borlaug had to optimize.
Their models basically turned knobs of pollution, resources, and output and found that replacing some rice crops with millets and sorghum would be better for the country without undermining calorie production or using more land. Part of their secret sauce for convergence was reducing impacts of climate change, which are basically impossible to model but seem to be mandatory to get published in PNAS.(2)

But it's reason for optimism, especially when environmental groups and their political allies at media corporations act more like a doomsday cult. Yet Dr. Borlaug faced the same cultural milieu and now has taken his place as one of the most important scientists of the 20th century.

There are challenges, sure. Opposed to science are $2 billion in activist groups engaged in a war of extinction on food and chemicals, but just like there are still vaccine deniers, a new generation will see through their scaremongering, even in Europe, and not want developing countries to be left behind. 

Endangered whales react to environmental changes

New study documents altered right whale movements in Massachusetts Bay
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
  IMAGE: THIS IS A NORTH ATLANTIC RIGHT WHALE BREACHING. 
CREDIT: SUSAN PARKS
Ithaca, NY--Some "canaries" are 50 feet long, weigh 70 tons, and are nowhere near a coal mine. But the highly endangered North Atlantic right whale is sending the same kind of message about disruptive change in the environment by rapidly altering its use of important habitat areas off the New England coast. These findings are contained in a new study published in Global Change Biology by scientists at the Center for Conservation Bioacoustics (formerly the Bioacoustics Research Program) at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and at Syracuse University. It's the longest running published study to continuously monitor the presence of any whale species at one location using sound."
"The change in right whale presence in Massachusetts Bay over the six years of the study is striking," says lead author Russ Charif, senior bioacoustician at the Center for Conservation Bioacoustics (CCB) at Cornell. "It's likely linked to rapid changes in conditions along the Atlantic Coast, especially in the Gulf of Maine which is warming faster than 99% of the rest of the world's ocean surface."
Charif points out that, starting in 2011, other studies began documenting dramatic changes in habitat use by right whales in other parts of the Gulf of Maine, which includes Massachusetts Bay and Cape Cod Bay. Massachusetts Bay is the gateway to Cape Cod Bay, one of the most important feeding areas for North Atlantic right whales, who congregate there in large numbers in late winter to early spring.
Nineteen marine autonomous recording units (MARUs) were deployed by CCB in Massachusetts Bay from July 2007 to April 2013, recording around-the-clock to detect the characteristic "up-call" of the North Atlantic right whale. Analysis of 47,000 hours of recordings by computer detection systems and human analysts found that in all but one of the study years detection of right whale calls kept increasing.
"During the six years of the study, our detection rates doubled during the winter-spring months," says study co-author Aaron Rice, principal ecologist with CCB. "During the summer-fall months the rate of detection for right whales had increased six-fold by the end of the study period, rising from 2% to 13% of recorded hours."
The scientists found right whales were present to varying degrees all year round in Massachusetts Bay, with implications for conservation efforts.
"There are seasonal conservation measures that kick in based on our historical understanding of where and when right whales are most often congregating, including Massachusetts Bay," Rice explains. "But the old patterns have changed and whales are showing up in areas where there are no protections in place to reduce the likelihood of ship strikes or fishing gear entanglements."
Entanglements and ship strikes remain the biggest threats to right whales with unknown cumulative effects from changing water temperatures, rising ocean noise pollution, and other stressors. The increasing use of Massachusetts Bay occurred even as the overall right whale population declined. Latest estimates peg the population at about 400 animals with only 95 of them females of reproductive age.
"Our study data end in 2013 and conditions may have changed even more since then," says Charif. "We need to do more of these long-term studies if we're to have any hope of understanding how right whale habitat is changing because of human activities and before it's too late for the species to survive."
###
Funding for acoustic data collection and initial analysis was provided by Excelerate Energy L.P. and Neptune LNG, LLC. Funding for multi-year data compilation, analysis, and synthesis was provided by the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission (Grant Number MMC14-207).
Reference:
Russell A. Charif, Yu Shiu, Charles A. Muirhead, Christopher W. Clark, Susan E. Parks, Aaron Rice. (2019) Phenological Changes in North Atlantic Right Whale Habitat Use in Massachusetts Bay. Global Change Biology.
Media downloads: video, sound, graphic, images https://cornell.app.box.com/folder/90447207504

China's top 10 advances in agricultural science help feed the nation

Source: Xinhua| 2019-11-20 12:27:31|Editor: huaxia
NANJING, Nov. 20 (Xinhua) -- Chinese experts have selected the 10 most significant advances in cutting-edge agricultural science and technology in fields that are making life better for farmers and helping to feed the world's most populous nation.
Research on rewiring of the fruit metabolome in tomato breeding helped restore the original good taste of tomatoes of former times and provided big data and innovative methods for the study of the molecular mechanism of plant metabolites.
Scientists found that a selfish genetic element confers non-Mendelian inheritance in rice, and this study challenges traditional genetic laws, and could help cultivate new high-yield rice varieties.
In another study, scientists discovered a single transcription factor that promotes both yield and immunity in rice.
The selected advances include studies in modulating plant growth-metabolism coordination for sustainable agriculture, genomic variation in more than 3,010 diverse accessions of Asian cultivated rice, and rapid evolution of H7N9 highly pathogenic viruses that emerged in China in 2017.
Chinese scientists have also achieved advances in genetic studies of cotton, bacterial resistance and a new mechanism of plant immune pathways.
The 10 advances by Chinese agricultural scientists last year were announced at the Forum 2019 on Science and Technology for Agricultural and Rural Development in China, which opened Wednesday in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province.

Cinnamon Horchata Rice Pudding

This post may include affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
NOVEMBER 11, 2019 — BY YVETTE MARQUEZ
If you love horchata and love rice pudding, then you will love this rich and comforting dairy-free Cinnamon Horchata Rice Pudding. This dish is slow simmered with cinnamon sticks, cloves and Mexican vanilla extract in one pot in about 45 minutes, making it a simple dessert.

Classic Latin flavors in one creamy bite. This rice pudding can be served warm or chilled and is the perfect dish to enjoy after a festive meal. A small serving goes a long way and is all you need.
This dessert is similar to traditional arroz con leche, but is dairy free, made with a combination of almond milk and rice milk. The nostalgic flavors and spices remind me of my grandma, and so I celebrated, serving this rice pudding in her vintage pink Depression glass bowls.

I don’t think my grandma ever used these bowls. I have a feeling she was saving them for a special occasion. Serving the rice pudding in these bowls was a great reminder to pull out your pretty dishes and celebrate every day – don’t wait for a “special occasion.”
This rice pudding can be made with authentic Mahatma grains, such as long grain rice, but also works very well with Mahatma Arborio Rice for a creamy, tender and slightly chewy texture.
Mahatma Rice is a staple in my pantry, and obviously extremely versatile; rice is not only for savory dishes.

Cinnamon Horchata Rice Pudding

servings: 8 SERVINGS
prep time: 5 MINUTES
cook time: 35 MINUTES
total time: 50 MINUTES
If you love horchata and love rice pudding, then you will love this rich and comforting dairy-free Cinnamon Horchata Rice Pudding. This dish is slow simmered with cinnamon sticks, cloves and Mexican vanilla extract in one pot in about 45 minutes, making it a simple dessert.

INGREDIENTS

·       1 cup Mahatma long-grain riceor Arborio Rice
·       1/4 cup granulated sugar
·       2 cups vanilla-flavored almond milk 
·       3 cups rice milk
·       1 teaspoon Mexican vanilla extract
·       2 cinnamon sticks
·       2 cloves 
·       Ground cinnamon to garnish

INSTRUCTIONS

1.              In a large saucepan, combine rice, sugar, almond milk, rice milk, vanilla extract, cinnamon sticks, and cloves. 
2.     Bring to a boil and then lower heat to low heat and simmer the rice until it is very soft and achieves a thick, pudding-like consistency, about 35 minutes. Cover and let rest for 10 minutes. 
3.     Remove the cinnamon sticks and cloves. 
4.     This rice pudding can be served warm or chilled and sprinkled with ground cinnamon. 
course: BREAKFAST, DESSERT
cuisine: MEXICAN
keyword: ALMOND MILK
author: YVETTE MARQUEZ

I’D LOVE TO SEE WHAT YOU COOK!

TAG #MUYBUENOCOOKING IF YOU MAKE THIS RECIPE.
Subscribe to Muy Bueno to get new recipes in your inbox and stay in touch on TwitterFacebookInstagramPinterest and YouTube.
Photography by Jenna Sparks 
This post is in partnership with Mahatma. As always, thank you for reading and for supporting companies I partner with, which allows me to create more unique content and recipes for you. All opinions are always my own.
posted by YVETTE MARQUEZ in ALL RECIPESBREAKFASTCHRISTMASDESSERTSSPONSORED POSTSTHANKSGIVING

ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Yvette Marquez is an Emmy-winning producer and writer, award-winning food blogger, and author of Muy Bueno and Latin Twist. She is a second-generation Mexican-American, born and raised in El Paso, Texas and currently lives in Colorado. She has been sharing cherished family Mexican recipes since 2010. Her blog is the perfect destination for anyone looking to embrace their culture through food, fiestas, and family life. Yvette has been featured in several prominent publications, websites, radio, and TV. Follow her

Description: https://newfoodeconomy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/NewsMatch_Leaderboard-1.png

California’s Chinook salmon are in danger. Rice fields just might be their salvation

Jak Wonderly
The Golden State's native salmon have been losing habitat to agriculture for decades. Now, they’re getting a much-needed boost from strategically flooded rice fields.
Snow geese erupt against a blue sky trimmed with fresh, white clouds. The air is so clear you can see for miles, east to the distant peaks of the Sierra Nevada and west to the gentle slopes of the Coast Ranges. But Carson Jeffres and Jacob Katz are less interested in the view above them than the one at their feet. Standing knee-deep in a flooded field at Knaggs Ranch, a rice farm near Sacramento, they peer into a floating cage made of PVC pipe and mesh and prepare to check on its unusual inhabitants.
Jeffres opens the top of the cage and dips in a small net. When he pulls it out, a pair of plump fish, each the size of a pinky finger, wriggle inside. These are young Chinook salmon—a species imperiled in California. He holds up his catch for Katz to admire.
This story originally appeared in bioGraphic, an online magazine about nature and sustainability powered by the California Academy of Sciences.
The two men are fish ecologists—Jeffres at the University of California, Davis, and Katz at the conservation-based non-profit California Trout—and they are testing a wild idea. To help save the Chinook, they are using rice fields as winter nurseries for young salmon migrating from their natal streams to the ocean.
Over the last century, water agencies have built levees along most of the state’s rivers to control floods and supply water to communities and farmers alike. But these levees also bar young Chinook from the floodplains that historically provided safe, food-rich places to grow on their journey to the Pacific. Today, more than half a million acres of these former floodplains in California’s immense interior valley are occupied by rice farms. Repurposing them as surrogate floodplains during the months they would otherwise lie fallow could be key to restoring endangered populations of wild-spawning Chinook.
Jak Wonderly
Carson Jeffres from the University of California, Davis and Jacob Katz from California Trout scoop a Chinook salmon fry out of a cage in a flooded rice field at Knaggs Ranch
Jak Wonderly
Carson Jeffres scoops two young Chinook salmon out of a cage in a flooded rice field near Sacramento
Jak Wonderly
The fish raised in the flooded rice fields at Knaggs Ranch grow quickly, thanks to a plentiful supply of freshwater crustaceans
“We can’t restore those floodplains,” says Rene Henery, California science director for the conservation non-profit Trout Unlimited, “but we can recover the functionality that the fish evolved with.”
California’s Central Valley is a flat expanse, flanked on either side by mountain ranges, that extends 400 miles down the middle of the state. Salmon once flourished in the streams and rivers that course through it. “One or two million came back every year,” says Peter Moyle, a fish ecologist at UC Davis. “They were up to 60 pounds and close to a meter long.”
For millennia, adult Chinook in California returned to spawn in the upper reaches of waterways that flow down from mountains surrounding the valley. Then, when the winter rainy season caused their natal streams to swell, the next generation of young fish would all swim downstream toward the sea, taking advantage of the many floodplains along the way.
The final stretch of their long journey would begin when the fish hit the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, where the water slows, twisting and turning around the Delta’s many islands. Migrating young salmon have to navigate these braided waterways before making their way across the San Francisco Bay and through the Golden Gate Strait, the iconic narrow opening spanned by the Golden Gate Bridge that leads to the ocean.

Fish out of Water

Dams now block Chinook salmon from reaching more than 90 percent of their spawning habitat in California’s Central Valley. Additionally, water diversions and other perturbations have rendered some of their accessible habitat unusable.
Today, few Central Valley salmon spawn in the wild. The region’s waterways have been completely remade into a system that includes 20 major dams and more than 1,600 miles of riverbank levees. While this engineered set-up tames flooding and supplies drinking and irrigation water, these benefits to people come at a cost to salmon. Dams block entry to the mountain streams where the fish once spawned, and levees block access to the valley-floor floodplains where young salmon once found plentiful food and shelter.
Across their range, Central Valley Chinook are all classified as a single species, but for management purposes the fish are divided into four runs according to the season when adults return from the Pacific Ocean to spawn. Two of those runs are listed under the federal Endangered Species Act, while the other two are considered federal populations of concern.
Engineered rivers are almost completely to blame. “Just as we’ve lost almost all the floodplain habitat, we’ve also lost pretty much all of the spawning habitat,” says Brian Ellrot, the Central Valley salmon recovery coordinator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which leads the efforts to restore populations of these fish.
Jak Wonderly
An aerial view of a canal and irrigation system near the Sacramento River illustrates how heavily engineered the landscape has become
“They’re just straggling along right now,” Jeffres says. “They’re propped up by hatcheries.” State hatcheries release more than 32 million young salmon annually, and these fish dominate all four runs of Central Valley Chinook.
The best way to restore Chinook salmon, fish biologists say, is to give them back some of what they’ve lost. To provide more spawning grounds, NOAA plans to start transporting migrating adults past Central Valley dams―from the downstream side to the upstream reaches―as is done by wildlife agencies in the states of Washington and Oregon.
Restoration of degraded spawning grounds below dams will also be critical to their recovery. While most salmon return to their natal waters to spawn, a few stray in search of new homes. This penchant for exploration allows them to revisit waterways where they had previously been extinct for decades. Recent restoration efforts are starting to pay off: After an absence of 70 years, Chinook now return by the hundreds to spawn in Putah Creek, a tributary of the Sacramento River. Likewise, for the first time in more than half a century, a couple dozen Chinook have found their way back to historical spawning grounds in the San Joaquin River, which flows from the Sierra Nevada to the Delta.
Jak Wonderly
A dense flock of snow geese lifts off from a flooded rice field in California’s Central Valley
Restoring floodplain nurseries is a harder problem to solve, since this habitat has been more dramatically altered and requires changes on a much larger scale. Repurposing rice fields in the off-season may be a big part of the answer, and NOAA is supportive of the effort. “We’re pushing to make that happen,” Ellrot says. “Salmon are really resilient―I’m optimistic that if we give them the right nudge, we can restore them in the valley.”
Restorationists have good reason to think that prime nursery grounds are vital to the long-term survival of the region’s salmon. The most robust population of spring-run Chinook originates in Butte Creek, which runs along a wildlife refuge that contains some of the valley’s few remaining floodplains. The Butte Creek salmon population is wild-spawning and self-sustaining. “It’s the one successful population of spring-run salmon,” Jeffres says. Young salmon here are more likely to make it out to sea, and the adults more likely to return and spawn.
“Fish abundance equals water security. It doesn’t have to be fish versus farms―it can be fish and farms.”
A probable reason for Butte Creek’s success is that it gives Chinook a place to grow and thrive. The creek’s young fish are larger than those elsewhere in the valley, and being bigger presumably boosts survival. “It makes the salmon more resilient,” Katz says, just like packing lunch before a long trip.
Jak Wonderly
An aerial view of restored wetlands in the Sacramento River floodplains near Knaggs Ranch
Before scientists understood the value of floodplains, they considered them risky for fish. “Wildlife biologists thought floodplains were bad for salmon because they stranded them, and that levees were good for salmon because they kept them in the river,” Moyle says. “It was pretty much unquestioned.”
It’s only in the last two decades that this conventional wisdom has been overturned. The first evidence came from scientists looking at the fate of young salmon in the Yolo Bypass. Built to contain a floodplain of the Sacramento River, the Bypass is an enormous flood control structure—about 40 miles long and two miles wide—that shunts water from the Sacramento River around the City of Sacramento. It’s bounded on either side by colossal, earthen levees that are more than 20 feet high and wide enough to drive on. When the river runs high, it overtops a weir at the north end of the levees. Water spills down inside the bypass, flooding it, then rejoins the river at the south end of the levees.
The Yolo Bypass only fills during the winter, and, when it does, some of the young salmon migrating downstream come along for the ride. During particularly wet winters, the bypass is so full it looks like an inland sea. “The floodplains are still there,” Katz says. “They’re just used differently, as bypasses.” A 1998 study concluded that salmon swept into the bypass grew faster than those that remained in the river.
Jeffres got similar results when he looked at fish in the Cosumnes, one of the state’s rare, free-flowing rivers that still has remnants of natural floodplains. In 2004, he found that young salmon in a floodplain grew faster than those in the Cosumnes River itself.
Jak Wonderly
Jacob Katz examines a water sample full of zooplankton, pulled from a flooded rice field at Knaggs Ranch near the Sacramento River
In 2009, the California Department of Water Resources decided to give salmon about 20,000 acres of floodplain habitat―one-third of the total acreage―in the Yolo Bypass. Most of the land there is privately owned and farmed for rice during the summer growing season. That decision caught the attention of rice farmer John Brennan, who wanted to keep fields in production in the Yolo Bypass.
Water is in short supply during the hot, dry Central Valley summers, especially during the state’s periodic severe droughts. Historically, the fight over this constrained resource has pitted growers against environmental laws that require allocating water for endangered fish like Chinook. Rather than playing this zero-sum game, Brennan has been looking for ways to integrate conservation with agriculture. “If you’re in the rice business, you’re in the water business―and if you’re in the water business, you’re in the fish business,” he says.
Katz puts it this way: “Fish abundance equals water security. It doesn’t have to be fish versus farms―it can be fish and farms.”
In flooded rice fields like this onenear the Sacramento River, the shallow, still water provides the perfect conditions for both algae and zooplankton to proliferate
Jak Wonderly
Jennifer Kronkfrom California Trout prepares to weigh and measure a young Chinook salmon
Jak Wonderly
Jennifer Kronk records fish measurements and tagging information at a sampling site
In 2010, Brennan joined forces with two environmentalists to see if rice fields in the bypass could be used as salmon nurseries during the winter, when the fields are dormant and fish are migrating downstream. After scouting the Yolo Bypass for available properties, Brennan and his partners settled on the rice fields of Knaggs Ranch as a chance to put their plan into practice. They bought the ranch and assembled a research team, starting with Jacob Katz since his father is one of Brennan’s partners. Katz invited Jeffres to join him, and the pair has collaborated ever since.
In the winter of 2012, the researchers flooded a five-acre corner of the ranch and released 10,000 young hatchery salmon in the fallow field. “When we first started, lots of farmers laughed and said it was the stupidest thing they’d ever heard,'” Jeffres says. He and Katz had their doubts, too. “It didn’t look like fish habitat,” Jeffres says, pointing across the ranch to their original test site. Flat brown fields stretch in all directions, and tidy mud berms divide the land into a patchwork of close-packed rice paddies. “We thought it might be the dumbest thing we’d ever done.”
Jak Wonderly
A Chinook salmon fry is measured at the Bodega Marine Laboratory at the University of California, Davis
They worried they’d end up with a field full of dead fish. They weren’t concerned about residual pesticides, which are applied months earlier and break down relatively quickly in the environment, but they fretted about a host of other potential pitfalls. They thought the stagnant, shallow water in the field might get too warm for fish or make them easy prey for hungry birds. And they didn’t know whether the decomposition of rice stubble, which is left on the fields after the fall harvest, would deplete oxygen levels in the water.
At first the researchers couldn’t tell whether anything was happening. “Out in the fields in mid-winter it looks like a mud puddle. We couldn’t see the fish,” Katz says. “Then we ran a net through the water and caught fish with little potbellies. It was amazing.”
Their rice-field test subjects did far more than survive. They thrived, growing five-fold―from 1 gram to more than 5―in just six weeks. “They grew at the highest rates recorded in the Central Valley,” Jeffres says.
Ultimately, the scientists envision that the young salmon, instead of being introduced into rice fields by humans, will leave their natal waters and migrate downstream and into the bypass on their own. To make that journey possible even if the weir hasn’t overflowed, the California Department of Water Resources wants to add gates that can be opened to let salmon swim in and out of the rice fields on their way to the ocean.
While there are still some barriers left to remove, the possibility of wild-spawning, self-sustaining Chinook runs raised on rice farms is no longer just a pipe dream. In the years since they launched their pilot project, Jeffres and Katz have expanded their effort to encompass 20 acres and 50,000 fish, proving that it can work on a real-world scale. They have also found that, on average, salmon reared in these rice-field nurseries weigh 12 times more than those that grow up in the Sacramento River. The reason for this, Jeffres says, is that there’s so much more for them to eat.
Jak Wonderly
This water sample, taken from a flooded rice field near the Sacramento River, is thick with small freshwater crustaceans in the genus Daphnia. The crustaceans are a nutritious food source for young salmon
Back at Knaggs Ranch, Jeffres wants to know just how much more food the rice fields contain. He casts a long, white net across the shallow water of a rice field then draws it back carefully, keeping clear of the mud. Katz tips the contents into a plastic bag and lifts it high so they can both see.
“Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy moly!” Katz exclaims. “I am totally astonished.”
Jeffres is equally jazzed. “That’s insane!”
Inside the plastic bag, tiny freshwater crustaceans―or “bugs,” as the researchers call them―dart back and forth in constant motion. The water is so thick with them that it looks like a whirling cloud of pink.
These small crustaceans are the perfect food for young fish, and this haul is the best Katz and Jeffres have ever seen. Most of the bugs they netted belong to the genus Daphnia, often dubbed water fleas for the way they swim in short hops. They’re here in such abundance because they thrive in shallow, algae-rich waters, from puddles to flooded fields to floodplains. “It’s magic when water slows down and spreads across a floodplain,” Katz says. “It’s liquid protein.”
Pickings are far slimmer in rivers. Katz holds up another bag, this one netted about an hour earlier from the Sacramento River. Just a few crustaceans scoot around inside it. “There’s basically nothing here,” he says. “By building levees, we’ve created rivers that are essentially food deserts.”
Jak Wonderly
Jacob Katz throwsa siphon to collect a water sample in a flooded rice field near the Sacramento River
The Sacramento River has several flood control bypasses, and Katz estimates that, altogether, they contain up to 150,000 acres of rice fields that could be used as bug-rich salmon nurseries. Another 500,000 acres of rice farms lie along the Sacramento River but outside bypasses―and he thinks they may be able to help salmon, too.
One of these is River Garden Farms, which lies a short stretch upriver from Knaggs Ranch and is managed by Roger Cornwell. Like Brennan, Cornwell wondered if his fields could benefit salmon, despite the fact that the land is not in a bypass. “I met Jacob Katz and started talking to him about what we could do,” he says. Katz proposed another wild idea, one that could solve the food-desert problem: bug farming.
They wanted to know, Jeffres says, “If we can’t bring the fish to the floodplain, can we bring the floodplain to the fish?”
Jak Wonderly
Jacob Katz examines the contents of asiphon after collecting a water sample in a flooded rice field near the Sacramento River
River Garden Farms is separated from the Sacramento River by a levee, atop which sits the Rough and Ready Pumping Plant, which was installed in 1915 to irrigate fields. The plant houses five glossy, black, massive pumps—each about six feet tall—which fill the pump house with a low roar. This past winter, the team took advantage of the setup and flooded a fallow rice field to raise bugs, then pumped the food-rich water into the Sacramento River to feed young fish as they swam through.
To test whether the bugs would reach their intended recipients, the researchers placed cages of young salmon at intervals along a mile or so of the river. The Rough and Ready pumps delivered bugs starting in late February, and Jacob Montgomery and Jennifer Kronk of California Trout took weekly measurements of the caged fish. By late March, when we visit, all the bugs have been pumped off the field. The field crew pulls on their waders and heads out to the river to see if the experiment worked.
Jak Wonderly
Jennifer Kronk from California Trout rinses the contents of a siphon into a specimen bag in order to measure the amount of zooplankton present
They start at a site upstream of the pumping plant, where the caged fish didn’t get any field-raised bugs. Montgomery and Kronk wrestle a cage to the river’s muddy bank. Montgomery hefts the cage above the water, revealing young salmon that flash silver as they flip back and forth in distress. The team works fast so as to get the fish back to the river as soon as possible. Montgomery places each fish in a tray with a ruler, splashing it with water to keep it calm and still, and calls out the length for Kronk to record. Then he passes it to her for weighing. When the measuring is done, he estimates that the upstream fish averaged about 55 millimeters long and weighed around 2 grams.
Moving downstream to the next site, Kronk scoops up a fish collected right by the pump outfall. This site got the most bugs delivered from the rice field―if the experiment works, they’ll see it here.
“Oh, he’s fat,” Kronk says.
Jak Wonderly
On the left, a water sampletaken from a flooded rice field is bursting with zooplankton. On the right, a water sample taken from the Sacramento River on the same day contains very little food for young salmon
She lays it in the measuring tray. It’s 65 millimeters and 2.5 grams, considerably bigger than the upstream average. The next fish is even fatter, at 66 mm and just over 3 g, and the one after that is fatter still, at 71 mm and 4 g.
“Wow, look at these guys. They’re doing great,” Montgomery says.
Although supplying bugs to fish in a free-flowing river doesn’t guarantee delivery, a system that monitors migrating salmon is already in place―so the researchers will know when to expect the fish and can serve them food from the fields at just the right time. “We can pump bugs into the river when fish are passing by,” Katz says. By spring, the salmon will have completed their journey, and the rice fields will be drained and ready for planting.
Fish biologists have long assumed that the larger young salmon are when they navigate the Delta, the faster they can swim and the better their chances of survival. “It’s a really dangerous place,” Trout Unlimited’s Rene Henery says. “There are lots of introduced predatory fish.” To date, however, there is no direct evidence that size is important to survival.
“In the fish world, we say bigger fish are more likely to make it to the ocean. But no one has actually looked at survival,” says Rachelle Tallman, a graduate student in fish ecology at UC Davis. Tallman is now heading up a project to do just that.
The project is part of an effort by the California Rice Commission to incentivize farmers to manage their rice fields in a way that benefits local wildlife. Paul Buttner, who manages environmental affairs for the commission, currently pays farmers to flood their fields for water birds migrating along the Pacific Flyway. He hopes to launch a similar program for salmon that would compensate farmers for creating floodplain nurseries for young, migrating fish. But first he needs solid proof that it works.
“How many salmon from fields survive and go out the Golden Gate?” Buttner asks. “More than those that grow up in the river?”
While the Rough and Ready plant was pumping bugs into the Sacramento River, Tallman was setting up a different experiment to assess how size affects a salmon’s success. She reared two sets of young salmon: some in a laboratory tank and others in rice fields in the Yolo Bypass. Now, on a warm April day near the edge of the bypass, she’s pulling fish from the rice fields and equipping them with acoustic tags so she can compare survival rates as they swim out to, and beyond, the Golden Gate.

Jak Wonderly
Rachelle Tallman, a graduate student at the University of California, Davis, makes an incision in the abdomen of a salmon fry to insert a tracking tag
Tallman stands at a fish-surgery station sheltered by a white tent. As she slips a young salmon into a bucket of anesthetic, she alerts her team that a surgery is in progress. “Dope!” she calls out.  A minute later the fish has stopped wriggling and Tallman springs into action. In rapid succession, she weighs it, measures it, and places it on a foam block. Cool water streams across the fish, which lies motionless apart from flapping gills.
Surgical scissors in hand, Tallman cuts a small opening in its belly and pushes a centimeter-long tag inside. She closes the wound with a single stitch and knots both ends. “Fish out of surgery,” she calls. A crew member collects the salmon and puts it in a recovery bucket. The whole operation, including anesthesia, takes just two minutes. Then Tallman picks up another fish and starts the process anew. “Dope!” she says.
Back at the lab, another crew tags tank-reared fish. Collectively, the team tags more than 750 salmon.
A day after the surgeries, Tallman releases her tagged salmon into the wild, sending some into the Sacramento River and some into the Yolo Bypass, which drains into the Sacramento. About 200 underwater acoustic receivers will track their progress.
By early May, the first tagged fish have navigated the perils of the Delta. Now, they must traverse the San Francisco Bay—a huge body of water that covers more than 500 square miles. But this part of their journey is less risky. Once they’ve gotten this far, most young salmon readily find their way across the Bay and swim through its narrow opening beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, out into the Pacific Ocean. It will likely be December before Tallman can crunch all the data and tell Buttner whether—and how much—the rice field nurseries boost survival rates for the salmon. While the final verdict is still out, Buttner says they’re all hoping for a nice Christmas present.
The fish in Tallman’s study that do make it to the Pacific and survive in the open ocean will eventually attempt to return as adults to spawn in the Central Valley’s extensive but highly altered river system. It’s a journey the scientists hope will become at least slightly less challenging in the years to come. “We’re not going to get back what we once had,” Jeffres says. “But we can mimic it.” He and Katz envision waterways that are managed for flood control and farming but also for Chinook survival, ones with rice-field nurseries and bug farms to help restore self-sustaining salmon populations.
“It’s about welcoming the wild back into human landscapes in a way that makes sense,” Katz says. “We’re reimagining the system to work with nature.”
This story originally appeared in bioGraphic, an online magazine about nature and sustainability powered by the California Academy of Sciences.
Robin Meadows is a science journalist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Recent stories have taken her to former commercial salt ponds in the San Francisco Bay, homeless encampments along creeks, and a Superfund Site on tribal land. She is the water reporter for the Bay Area Monitor, and her work has also appeared in Audubon, Conservation, High Country News, Nature, and others.
Description: Jak Wonderly
Jak Wonderly's work has been published in National Geographic, Sunset, the Los Angeles Times, Wine Spectator, American Cowboy, Alaska Airlines magazine, and CNN among others. Commercially, he photographs agriculture, travel, and equestrian subjects. He is represented by National Geographic Image Collection. Wonderly has worked on assignment for The Nature Conservancy, Wild Wonders of China, and the Snow Leopard Conservancy, and volunteers at his local wildlife rescue in Sonoma County, California.


Bangladesh could be the first to cultivate golden rice, genetically altered to fight blindness


A serving of golden rice contains half the beta-carotene children need daily
ISAGANI SERRANO/CPS/IRRI PHOTO/FLICKR/CC BY-NC-SA
Soon. That has long been scientists' answer when ask
Description: https://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/styles/inline__450w__no_aspect/public/ca_1122NID_Golden_Rice_online.jpg?itok=-fvUzP01 ed about the approval of golden rice, a genetically modified (GM) crop that could help prevent childhood blindness and deaths in the developing world. Ever since golden rice first made headlines nearly 20 years ago, it has been a flashpoint in debates over GM crops. Advocates touted it as an example of their potential benefit to humanity, while opponents of transgenic crops criticized it as a risky and unnecessary approach to improve health in the developing world.
Now, Bangladesh appears about to become the first country to approve golden rice for planting. "It is really important to say we got this over the line," says Johnathan Napier, a plant biotechnologist at Rothamsted Research in Harpenden, U.K., who was not involved in the crop's development. He says approval would show that agricultural biotechnology can be successfully developed by publicly funded research centers for the public good. Still, environmental groups haven't dropped their opposition—and the first harvest isn't expected until at least 2021. And more research will be needed to show the extent of real-world benefits from golden rice.
Golden rice was developed in the late 1990s by German plant scientists Ingo Potrykus and Peter Beyer to combat vitamin A deficiency, the leading cause of childhood blindness. Low levels of vitamin A also contribute to deaths from infectious diseases such as measles. Spinach, sweet potato, and other vegetables supply ample amounts of the vitamin, but in some countries, particularly those where rice is a major part of the diet, vitamin A deficiency is still widespread; in Bangladesh it affects about 21% of children.

SIGN UP FOR OUR DAILY NEWSLETTER

Get more great content like this delivered right to you!
To create golden rice, Potrykus and Beyer collaborated with agrochemical giant Syngenta to equip the plant with beta-carotene genes from maize. They donated their transgenic plants to public-sector agricultural institutes, paving the way for other researchers to breed the golden rice genes into varieties that suit local tastes and growing conditions.
Over the past 2 years, regulators in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia approved golden rice for consumption. There are no plans to grow the crop in these countries, but approval will prevent problems if golden rice somehow accidentally turns up in food supplies.
The golden rice under review in Bangladesh was created at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Baños, Philippines. Researchers bred the beta-carotene genes into a rice variety named dhan 29, which is grown widely during the dry season in Bangladesh and contributes about 14% of the national harvest. In tests of dhan 29 golden rice at multiple locations, researchers at the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) in Gazipur found no new farming challenges and no significant differences in quality—except for the presence of vitamin A.
BRRI submitted data to the Bangladeshi Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change in November 2017. The Biosafety Core Committee, a group of eight officials and scientists, has since been reviewing environmental risks, such as the plant's potential to become a weed, as well as food safety. The review is nearing completion; on 28 October, the Dhaka Tribune reported that a decision would be made by 15 November.
That date has come and gone; the holdup appears to be due to the death of a committee member. But a source familiar with the committee's deliberations says some members remain skeptical of golden rice, wondering for example why it is needed when people could also eat more vegetables.
Proponents are optimistic, however. The scientific evidence is strong, the committee previously approved another transgenic crop, and golden rice enjoys high-level political support in Bangladesh, they say. "We are hopeful that golden rice might get the green light soon," says Arif Hossain, director of Farming Future Bangladesh in Dhaka, which is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to inform policymakers and others about biotechnology.
After the environment ministry signs off, golden rice must be registered by a seed certification agency within the Ministry of Agriculture, which requires field trials in multiple places to test for seed quality. If all goes smoothly, farmers might have golden rice seed to plant by 2021.
How popular it will be is uncertain. Farmers in Bangladesh quickly adopted an eggplant variety engineered to kill certain insect pests after its 2014 introduction, but that crop offered an immediate benefit: Farmers need fewer insecticides. Golden rice's health benefits will emerge more slowly, says agricultural economist Justus Wesseler of Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands, so adoption may be slower as well. The government may need to promote golden rice and, Hossain says, even subsidize farmers to grow it.
Consumer acceptance may be another challenge, given the golden hue, says Sherry Tanumihardjo, who studies vitamin A and global health at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. "People have a difficult time changing the color of food they eat," and many people in Bangladesh prefer to eat white rice. On the other hand, cooked golden rice resembles khichuri, a popular dish of rice and lentils cooked with turmeric, which may increase its appeal. With Gates Foundation support, IRRI and BRRI are developing a strategy for directing farmers' harvest to rural regions and cities with high poverty and malnutrition rates.
Opposition from nongovernmental organizations could still hobble the introduction. Last month, two groups in Bangladesh—the Agricultural Farm Labour Federation and the National Women Farmers & Workers Association—called for a ban on both golden rice and transgenic eggplant.
If golden rice does make inroads in Bangladesh, additional varieties better adapted to other seasons or locations may follow. Bred at BRRI, they are now in greenhouse trials. Like all local versions of golden rice, these varieties were created not with genetic engineering, but by traditional backcrossing, so they will likely not need biosafety approval. "There will be no problem for a year-round supply of biofortified rice," says Partha Biswas, a plant breeder at BRRI.
But for now, all eyes are on dhan 29. "It would be great to see it approved," Napier says. "It's been a long time coming."

U.S. Rice to go to South Korea
Spring flooding in 2017 hammered growers for roughly $175 million in damaged acreage and lost production.
( Chris Bennett ) U.S. rice will soon have a new market overseas.   The U.S. Trade Representative announced an agreement with South Korea. Under the plan, South Korea will open its markets for more than 132,000 tons of U.S. rice every year. The deal is valued at $110 million dollars. The U.S. Trade Representative released the following statement:
United States and South Korea Reach Agreement on Guaranteed Market Access for American Rice
Washington, DC –  United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue are pleased to announce that the Trump Administration has reached an agreement with the government of South Korea on market access for U.S. rice. Under the agreement, Korea will provide access for 132,304 tons of U.S. rice annually, with an annual value of approximately $110 million.  Korea also agreed to important disciplines to ensure transparency and predictability around the tendering and auctioning for U.S. rice. “Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, this agreement gives our farmers the largest volume of guaranteed market access for rice in Korea that the United States has ever enjoyed,” said Ambassador Lighthizer.  “It will prove enormously beneficial for American producers and their customers in Korea, who will enjoy access to high quality and cost competitive U.S. rice.” Secretary Perdue said, “Today’s announcement is another great testament of President Trump’s determination to expand export opportunities for America’s farmers and ranchers. Exports are critical for the economic health of the U.S. rice industry, with half our crop being exported every year. Agreements like this, that expand opportunities for U.S. rice producers in important markets, are critical to introduce foreign customers to the bounty of goods produced by America’s farmers.” Background: In 2014, the United States, Australia, China, Thailand, and Vietnam entered into negotiations with Korea when its special treatment for rice market access under the World Trade Organization (WTO) expired.  As a result of these negotiations, Korea agreed to include in its WTO Schedule a 408,700-ton tariff-rate quota for rice imports with a five percent in-quota duty and a 513-percent above-quota duty.  Of that 408,700 tons, Korea will allocate 388,700 tons of rice into country-specific quotas under a Plurilateral Agreement with the United States, Australia, China, Thailand and Vietnam.  The remaining 20,000 tons will be administered on a global basis, which U.S. suppliers can also bid for. The agreement gives the United States the greatest volume of guaranteed rice market access in Korea ever with an annual value of approximately $110 million.  Additionally, the agreement provides U.S. suppliers with enhanced disciplines related to administration of the U.S. country-specific quota.  The agreement will enter into force on January 1, 2020.  

Free Food Worthy of the Gods

After eating a vegetarian burrito given to me by a Hare Krishna on the Ave, I ventured out to Sammamish for a Love Feast.

Description: https://media2.fdncms.com/stranger/imager/u/large/42044880/the-stranger-hare-krishna-piece_mag.jpg
Hare Krishnas are vegetarian and religiously opposed to space exploration. JULIA WALD
  Description: submit to reddit
Iusually can't remember something I ate more than seven years ago (unless it made me throw up or something). But I still remember that burrito wrapped in tinfoil. A Hare Krishna handed it to me on the Ave back when I was in college. "For you," was all he said, silently waving away my offers to give it back. He went back to chanting.
"I wouldn't eat that," my friend warned me. Well, the Hare Krishna didn't give it to him. I unwrapped the foil.
SPONSORED
In the tradition of Homo For The Holidays: JINGLE ALL THE GAY! Dec 6-29
Wow.
It was really good: rice, potatoes, curry, ghee.
I think about that burrito more than any other single item of food I've eaten. It was so good, I read the pamphlet he gave me along with it: Easy Journey to Other Planets. Hare Krishnas (they are officially known as the International Society for Krishna Consciousness or ISKCON) are religiously opposed to space exploration, believing that money would be better spent supplying the entire world with quality vegetarian food.
Although the pamphlet originally came out in 1970 (to protest the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union), now that Jeff Bezos is using space exploration as a justification for destroying Seattle, the pamphlet is weirdly locally relevant. The amount of free food that the Hare Krishnas give out each Saturday in the University District from their Free Vegetarian Food Truck gives a taste of what a difference could be made if Elon Musk spent his money on feeding humanity instead of launching a Tesla into orbit.
Hare Krishnas believe there is food in outer space, but none of it is meant for humans. The demigods on the moon drink soma-rasa, which is delicious for demigods but can't be digested by Earth people. For us there is thandai, an Indian milk drink with a cinnamon/almond flavor that is occasionally served from the food truck. What they're serving at the food truck varies from week to week, but no matter what it is, it always tastes good. Since our time on Earth might as well be enjoyable, Hare Krishnas invest heavily in good food.
"It's not food, it's prasada," spiritual leader Harry Terhanian corrected in a recent sermon at the ISKCON Vedic Cultural Center in Sammamish. Each Sunday they hold a Love Feast, a free vegetarian banquet, at the center. I'd been wanting to go for years, but if you don't have a car, getting to their big pink temple surrounded by evergreens is like getting to the moon. There is no bus service remotely close to it on a Sunday.
To learn more about prasada, I finally decided to splurge and head out there. I got there partially by bus and partially by Lyft. I learned that for food to become prasada, it has to be offered to Krishna first. Not even the cooks are allowed to sample the food before it has been presented to Krishna.
Before the Love Feast, we chanted to the altar of Krishna playing the flute while the food for the banquet was laid below the statue's feet. All of Lord Krishna's senses are fused together—so for him, looking at the food is the same as tasting it. The founder of the Hare Krishna movement, Srila Prabhupada, explained the reasoning: "If a tuberculosis patient eats something and you eat the remnants, you will be infected with tuberculosis. Similarly, if you eat food left by Krishna, then you will be infected with Krishna consciousness."
They do not serve homeless people any food they would be embarrassed to serve God.
After Krishna tasted it, the food became prasada and we could eat.
In the dining hall, everybody sat on the floor with their shoes off. Having no tables made cleaning up afterward easy, as men with brooms just walked through the room during the feast, sweeping up anything that happened to spill. On entering, I got a paper cup of thandai and a paper plate. People walking around with metal buckets and ladles dropped enormous piles of food on my plate. At no cost to you, there is chickpea cucumber salad, curried potatoes with peas, and slender basmati rice covered in a curried tomato sauce.
Hare Krishna cooking is vegetarian, but not vegan, as they firmly believe that God loves dairy. The prasada is soaked in ghee (clarified butter), which makes it delicious. For religious reasons, they cannot eat any "foods in the mode of passion." That includes caffeine and hot peppers. If you like Indian food but (like me) have extremely white taste buds that can't handle heat, Hare Krishna cooking is perfect.
I was one of only four white people in the dining hall. And with my shoes off, I realized my feet could star in a haunted house movie about the world's palest ghost. Those who remember Hare Krishnas as being Caucasian burned-out hippies from the 1970s are always surprised to learn that the movement is now primarily Indian. The old Hare Krishna scene crashed hard back in the 1990s following a string of pedophiliac sex-abuse scandals in Hare Krishna boarding schools.
Terhanian, the Sammamish temple's spiritual leader, is a white holdover from the 1970s. His mother was a survivor of the Armenian genocide, and before the feast he gave a sermon condemning racism. But despite the sermon, and all the old Hare Krishna pamphlets depicting white, Indian, black, and Asian children playing together, the temple is obviously primarily meant for middle-class and rich Indians.
Do you want to support The Stranger? Contribute here.
But the Love Feast is open to all. If you're looking for a free meal and a sense of community around the holidays, it's worth checking out. That said, my bus trip to Issaquah, followed by a Lyft ride from there, plus a Lyft back to Seattle after the bus stopped running, cost me a total of $66.50.
And while you may be rolling your eyes at the bad stuff Hare Krishnas have done, those same things have been done by basically every other religion on the planet, and those religions don't provide great vegetarian food for free to homeless people. The temple might mostly be for Indians, but their U-District food truck is for everybody. 

South Korea agrees to open market to US rice worth $110M per year

Historic market access, U.S. trade officials say.

·   Facebook
·   Twitter
·   Comments
·   Print
·   Email
Former Commerce Department deputy director Chris Garcia gives his insights on the ongoing U.S.-China trade talks.
South Korea agreed to give the U.S. market access for approximately $110 million worth of rice a year, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue announced Tuesday.
"Thanks to President Trump's leadership, this agreement gives our farmers the largest volume of guaranteed market access for rice in Korea that the United States has ever enjoyed," Lighthizer said in a statement. "It will prove enormously beneficial for American producers and their customers in Korea, who will enjoy access to high quality and cost competitive U.S. rice."
The agreement providing access for 143,304 tons of rice annually will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2020.
Description: https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxbusiness.com/foxbusiness.com/content/uploads/2019/01/931/523/Robert-Lighthizer-AP.jpg?ve=1&tl=1
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
"This announcement continues the Trump administration's aggressive promotion of U.S. exports," Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., told FOX Business in a statement. "Since Arkansas leads the country in rice production, I hope to see even more international markets open up to allow our industry to thrive. I thank Trade Representative Lighthizer and Agriculture Secretary Perdue for their commitment to American agriculture."
Tuesday's agreement comes as the U.S. global trade landscape is in an uncertain place. The Trump administration is trying to make progress in negotiations with China and convince Congress to pass the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
The uncertainty combined with tariffs hasn't been good for farmers' bottom lines.
President Trump said Friday a new round of payments would go out to farmers caught up in the China trade war.
Description: https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/874276197357596672/kUuht00m_bigger.jpg


Our great Farmers will recieve another major round of “cash,” compliments of China Tariffs, prior to Thanksgiving. The smaller farms and farmers will be big beneficiaries. In the meantime, and as you may have noticed, China is starting to buy big again. Japan deal DONE. Enjoy!

"Our great Farmers will recieve [sic] another major round of 'cash,' compliments of China Tariffs, prior to Thanksgiving," Trump wrote on Twitter. "The smaller farms and farmers will be big beneficiaries."
"In the meantime, and as you may have noticed, China is starting to buy big again," he continued. "Japan deal DONE. Enjoy!"

S. Korea to Keep 513 Percent Tariff on Imported Rice

Write: 2019-11-20 11:36:00Update: 2019-11-20 11:54:17
Description: S. Korea to Keep 513 Percent Tariff on Imported Rice
YONHAP News
South Korea will maintain a 513 percent tariff on imported rice next year while applying import quotas on major rice exporting countries.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs on Tuesday, South Korea reached a deal with China, the U.S., Vietnam, Thailand and Australia -- five countries which had been disputing South Korea's high rice tariffs through the World Trade Organization since 2015.

After years of negotiations, South Korea reached an agreement with the five countries that allows Seoul to keep its 513 percent tariffs on imported rice.

In return, South Korea agreed to introduce annual import quotas for each country, with the highest quota applied to China with 157-thousand-195 tons of rice and the lowest applied to Australia, with 15-thousand-595 tons.

Rice imports from these two countries, along with the U.S., Vietnam and Thailand, will constitute 95 percent of the 408-thousand-700 tons subject to five percent tariffs under the government's Tariff Rate Quota(TRQ).

The remaining five percent, or 20-thousand tons, will be open for other countries. Additional rice imports exceeding the TRQ will be subject to the full 513 percent tariff rate.
November 20, 2019
PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte confirmed Tuesday night, November 20, that he ordered the suspension of rice importations as a remedy to the low farmgate prices of palay (unhusked rice).

He also noted that it is harvest season for locally grown rice.

Duterte further said he will ask Congress and Agriculture Secretary William Dar to appropriate funds for the purchase of rice grown by Filipino farmers, who are reeling from the impact of rice tariffication.

“What is the other remedy? Nothing. I cannot stop tariffication,” Duterte said in an interview with Palace reporters at the Malacañang late Tuesday night.

“You appropriate money and we will buy all the rice, farmgate price, from the farmers,” he added.

Republic Act (RA) 11203, or the Rice Tariffication Law, removed the quantitative restrictions in rice importations in a bid to improve supply and bring down prices which had caused inflation to surge in 2018.

This resulted in a large influx of imported rice in the market and the decline in farmgate prices of palay.

The government is set to release a total of P3 billion to around 600,000 farmers affected by the rice tariffication.

Duterte said he is willing to spend billions of pesos to help local farmers.

“Malugi? Lugi tayo, Pilipino? Malugi, ilang bilyon? P3 billion? Bakit? Para ang farmers mabuhay. Kaninong gastos? Gastos natin lahat (Will we suffer losses? Will Filipinos suffer losses? How many billions? P3 billion? Why? So the farmer can live. Who will spend? Us),” he said.

“Kung gusto natin, walang problema. Bibilhin lahat ng produced ng producer-farmers. Bilhin (If we want, there’s no problem with that. We will purchase all locally produced rice from producer-farmers),” Duterte added.

Duterte did not specify a time frame for the suspension of rice importations. (NASE/SunStar Philippines)

‘Stopping rice imports to hurt poor families’

Neda chief warns against reversing gains of liberalized trade regime
By: Ben O. de Vera - Reporter / @bendeveraINQ
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 04:11 AM November 20, 2019
Description: https://business.inquirer.net/files/2019/11/19rice.jpg
INQUIRER file photo
The country’s chief economist on Tuesday warned against reversing the gains made under the liberalized rice trade regime, under which he claimed lower prices redounded to the benefit of poor families.
Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto M. Pernia told reporters Tuesday that the government had already put in place measures to alleviate the impact of the Rice Tariffication Law—which removed the import quota—on palay farmers.
Pernia, who heads the state planning agency National Economic and Development Authority (Neda), said the Cabinet approved to give away about P3 billion in cash to farmers whose livelihoods were affected by the drop in palay prices amid a surge in imports.
The P3-billion funding will come from the tariff collection from imported rice that exceeded the P10-billion Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF).
If the government would backtrack on rice importation, Pernia warned, “we will be back to where we were last year,” referring to the high inflation episode partly caused by the domestic rice supply bottlenecks that pushed retail prices up.
When rice prices rise, “the poor will suffer,” Pernia added, as the bulk of Filipino families’ expenditures go to food items.
“Inflation for the 30-percent poorest [households] has come down to 0.9 percent—the much-bigger majority is benefitting,” Pernia said.
The latest Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data showed that the consumer price index (CPI) for the bottom 30-percent income households in October fell to a 46-month low of 0.9 percent year-on-year as food prices and cost of utilities declined year-on-year.
In a press conference last Monday, International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission chief Thomas Helbling described rice tariffication as a “major step forward” as he said it had been long overdue.
“I think rice tariffication—that is to move from import quotas to import tariffs—is helping the broader population. We would also know that, of course, rice farmers may suffer from this but the government has instituted income support for affected farmers,” Helbling told reporters.
The Action for Economic Reforms (AER) has also strongly urged President Duterte not to suspend the implementation of the RTL, noting that data from the PSA presented evidence that retail prices of rice have fallen significantly to the great benefit of the 100 million consumers of rice in the country, including the poorest of the poor who consider rice a basic necessity.
While the falling prices of palay is a growing concern, it said that any policy pronouncements implying the erosion of the RTL would create uncertainty over the law’s implementation and is precisely the cause for the lack of stability in palay prices. “Rice traders who anticipate a reversal of the law are hoarding rice, depressing farm gate prices to the detriment of Filipino rice farmers. Halting implementation would only play into their hands. To counter this, strong signals must be sent as regards the certainty and consistency of this reform,” it pointed out.
AER said the government must not renege on its policy commitment toward making rice more accessible and affordable for Filipino consumers while putting in place strategic measures that would address the farmers’ plight.
For one, the RCEF, which will be sourced from tariff collections on rice imports, will provide the means toward increasing farmers’ productivity and incomes in the long run. In the meantime, AER said the government can directly procure rice from local farmers in order to buoy prices. AER said it also strongly supported using the tariff collections in excess of P10 billion for the purpose of direct and conditional cash transfers to the rice farmers to provide transitional aid and as an incentive for farmers to increase productivity as they continue farming.
AER called on Mr. Duterte to stay the course in implementing the RTL and the swift implementation of mitigating measures to address the impact on rice farmers.

GIEWS Country Brief: Madagascar 20-November-2019
REPORT
Published on 20 Nov 2019
Description: preview
FOOD SECURITY SNAPSHOT
·       Planting of 2020 paddy crops underway following favourable weather conditions
·       Paddy production in 2019 estimated at above‑average level, reflecting larger plantings and higher yields
·       Prices of rice increased seasonally since July 2018, but were lower year on year in October 2019 due to improved national supplies
·       Number of food insecure declined due to impact of larger 2019 cereal harvest
Planting of 2020 paddy crops underway following favourable weather conditions
Planting of the 2020 main season cereal crops, mainly paddy, has recently started and is expected to continue until mid‑January. Overall, adequate and well‑distributed rains from October have boosted soil moisture levels and supported planting activities.
The latest seasonal weather forecasts indicate a higher likelihood of average to above‑average rainfall for the period between November 2019 and March 2020 in the key paddy‑producing areas, located in the central and northern regions. By contrast, rainfall is forecast at below‑average levels for the same period in most southern regions, which normally experience prolonged periods of drought conditions.
Above‑average paddy production estimated in 2019
Harvesting of the 2019 paddy crop concluded in July and production is estimated at about 3.9 million tonnes, 9 percent above the previous five‑year average. Production increases were reported across most regions, mainly due to an above‑average area planted and high yields resulting from conducive rainfall and temperatures throughout the cropping season.
Harvesting of the 2019 maize crop concluded last April and production is estimated at 220 000 tonnes, slightly above the previous year’s low level but still well below the five‑year average. In spite of an estimated increase in yields this year, supported by favourable weather conditions, a lower‑than‑average area planted kept this year’s harvest at a low level. The reduced area sown to maize was partly caused by infestations of Fall Armyworms, reported in the country since 2017, which prompted farmers to decrease plantings.
Cereal import requirements increase slightly in 2019/20
The aggregate import requirement of cereals in the 2019/20 marketing year (April/March) are forecast to increase to an above‑average level of 600 000 tonnes. Despite the rebound in paddy production in 2020, import requirements of rice, which account for the largest share of imports, are forecast at 450 000 in 2019/20, 15 percent above the average, as the country seeks to replenish stocks and buffer domestic availabilities following two consecutive years of below average paddy harvests. Import requirements of wheat are forecast at 130 000 tonnes, 7 percent above the average, reflecting increasing demand for food use.
Prices of rice increased seasonally but lower on a yearly basis
Prices of rice have increased seasonally in the past four months but, as of October 2019, they were lower year on year as the 2019 bumper harvest boosted national supplies. Stable exchange rates and international prices of rice have also contributed to limiting imported inflation in 2019 and lessening upward pressure on domestic rice prices.
High prevalence of severe food insecurity persists in spite of improved 2019 harvests
The number of people experiencing severe food insecurity declined by almost 30 percent in 2019, mainly due to improved domestic availabilities of staple foods (rice, maize and cassava) and lower prices of cereals compared to the previous year. According to the latest Vulnerability Assessment Committee’s (VAC) evaluation, about 916 000 people are estimated to be in IPC Phase 3: “Crisis” and Phase 4: “Emergency” in December 2019, well below 1.26 million people in the previous year.
Sindh’s education boards told to follow AKU-EB’s system from 2020
Naeem Sahoutara
Updated November 16, 2019
Description: The SHC asks chief secretary to form a committee to apply National Curriculum Policy 2006 in Sindh. — Reuters/File
The SHC asks chief secretary to form a committee to apply National Curriculum Policy 2006 in Sindh. — Reuters/File

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court has directed all education boards in the province to ensure implementation of a court order in letter and spirit with regard to upgrade of the curriculum and examination system on the pattern of The Aga Khan University Examination Board (AKU-EB) from 2020.
A single bench headed by Justice Salahuddin Panhwar further directed the boards to submit details as to how they had implemented that relevant paragraph of the court’s Aug 2 order passed in a constitutional petition filed at the SHC’s circuit bench at Hyderabad.
The bench issued these directives while hearing an appeal of a female officer of the education department regarding preparation of an alleged fake invigilation bill by another education officer for annual examination 2011.
She alleged in the appeal, filed in 2017, that a senior education officer along with an official of the National Accountability Bureau approached and pressurised her to release the payment.
At the outset, IBA registrar Engineer Zahid Khan Khand, who was appointed by the court as amicus curiae (friend of the court), submitted his recommendations/suggestions.
The SHC asks chief secretary to form a committee to apply National Curriculum Policy 2006 in Sindh
The provincial law officer as well as representatives of the Karachi, Sukkur and Larkana education boards failed to submit the criteria of amount specified for invigilation and other expenses incurred on the examinations, as sought by the court in the last hearing.
The bench ordered all boards of education to ensure compliance of the Aug 2 order regarding upgrade of the curriculum and examination system on the pattern of the Aga Khan Examination Board “in its letter and spirit from the year 2020 onwards”.
The secretary of universities and boards was directed to ensure compliance with the court’s order.
The IBA registrar pointed out that despite a federal policy regarding curriculum adopted in 2006, which was being implemented in other three provinces, the Sindh education department was yet to apply the same here.
He added that the policy was also applicable to all the universities, colleges and schools.
The bench ordered that the policy shall be applied in Sindh from 2020 onwards and directed the Sindh chief secretary to constitute a high-level committee in this regard within one week of receipt of the copy of this order.
The proposed committee would be headed by Nisar Ahmed Siddiqui, the vice chancellor of the IBA-Sukkur, and comprise of chairmen of the boards of education, chairman of the Sindh Textbook Board (STBB), director curriculum, former and incumbent managing director of the Sindh Education Foundation (SEF), the VCs of the Sindh, Karachi and Khairpur universities, secretary schools and colleges secretary.
The court said that all the boards and universities would be responsible and they shall come forward with an undertaking in this regard.
Noting that the curriculum policy and publication of books related to the STBB and director curriculum, the court directed them to ensure that books shall be made available as per curriculum and as per standard of the National Curriculum Policy 2006, as applied in the Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan education departments.
The IBA registrar stated that normally the Aga Khan Board recommended the textbooks of Punjab and KP textbook boards instead of STBB, which needed to be upgraded and ensure that the books published were at par with other provinces.
Issuing notices to the STBB chairman and the director curriculum for the next date, the bench asked them to submit an undertaking and mechanism that from 2020 onwards textbooks would be available a month prior to the commencement of the academic session in the province.
The bench directed to send the IBA registrar’s suggestions/recommendations to all education boards asking them to consider the same or come forward with a better proposal.
The court told all chairmen of the boards to sit together and submit their policy to remove nuisance/unfair means of cheating in examinations and submit their compliance reports/better proposal on Dec 11.
The chief secretary was told to supervise that process and its implementation.
Published in Dawn, November 16th, 2019
Dawn News

Villar: Suspension of rice importation good for local farmers


BACOLOD. Senator Cynthia Villar with SPM Andrew Montelibano leads the ribbon cutting during the opening of the 14th Negros Island Organic Farmer’s Festival in front of the Provincial Capitol Wednesday, November 20, 2019. (Photo by Prime Tejida)
November 20, 2019
THE order of President Rodrigo Duterte to suspend the importation of rice is good for the local farmers in the country, Senator Cynthia Villar said Wednesday, November 20.

Villar was in Bacolod City as guest of the 14th Negros Island Organic Farmers’ Festival at the Provincial Capitol that opened Wednesday.

“It means they will limit the importation because before you import you need to secure sanitary permits,” she said.

Villar said that the national government will delay the importation until the end of the harvest season so their products can be sold.

The Philippines always imports because the domestic rice production is not enough, the senator said.

Villar clarified that the liberalization of the rice industry is covered by the agreements of the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade-World Trade Organization (GATT-WTO) signed in 1995 and expired on 2017.

President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered Agriculture Secretary William Dar to suspend the importation of rice in order to help local farmers who suffered from the rice tariffication law.

Duterte gave the order in a press conference late Tuesday night, November 19, saying the move was needed to avoid “riots” brought about by hunger and a lack of food.

He added that among the reasons for the lack of rice was local producers’ failure to accurately predict how much they produce citing factors such as climate change, which affected local farmers’ projected output come harvest time.

The President said he opted to stop the importation of rice as he could not stop rice tariffication, which was needed to “erase corruption.”

Duterte did not say for how long the order would be in place, claiming it was needed to ensure farmers earned from their efforts.

Duterte ordered Congress to appropriate the needed funds to buy “all the rice” from local farmers and additional stocks needed to feed millions of consumers.

Since the signing of Republic Act 1120 or an “An Act liberalizing the importation, exportation, and trading of rice, lifting for the purpose the quantitative import restriction on rice,” farmgate prices of palay (unhusked rice) have reportedly dropped to as low as P7 per kilo in some areas.

Critics said the passage of the rice tariffication law that replaced import quotas with tariffs.

With the rice tariffication law, the deregulation of rice meant imported rice flooding the country, to the disadvantage of Filipino rice farmers and the local rice industry as a whole, which can’t compete with the prices of rice from countries like Thailand and Vietnam.

Since the enactment of the rice tariffication law in February, lawmakers have attempted to pass measures that will allow the government to use Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) rice subsidy funds to buy palay from local farmers in select provinces.

In her speech, Villar informed local officials of Negros Occidental that the government under the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund is distributing to 947 rice-producing towns in the country with a minimum rice land of 100 hectares.

Every year, she said every town will receive P5 million worth of equipment for the next six years as part of the government’s agriculture mechanization program.

If your local government does not receive anything report it to the Senate and we will use our oversight powers, she added.

These towns will also receive 20 kilos of in-bred seeds per hectare, Villar said adding that these seeds will increase one’s rice production by 50 percent.

From four metric tons per hectare, to six metric tons per hectare, she said.

We want to bring the cost of rice so that our rice industry can be competitive, she also said.

Villar also said that under the Philippine Rice Program every hectare will receive one bag of fertilizer.

Funding for these programs comes from the tariff imposed on imported rice, she said.

Gov’t wavering on rice tariffs could weaken farmers’ market position
November 19, 2019 | 8:45 pm
Description: NFA rice warehouse importPHILSTAR/MICHAEL VARCAS
ACTION for Economic Reforms (AER), a non-government organization, warned the administration against sending any signals that would call into doubt the future of the Rice Tariffication Law, saying that its repeal will give rice traders even more leverage to depress the price they pay to farmers.
“While the falling prices of palay (unmilled rice) is a growing concern, any policy pronouncements which imply the erosion of the Rice Tariffication Law creates uncertainty over the law’s implementation and is precisely the cause for the lack of stability in palay prices. Rice traders who anticipate a reversal of the law (will be) hoarding rice, depressing farmgate prices to the detriment of Filipino rice farmers,” AER said in a statement.
“Halting implementation would only play into their hands,” it added.
To prevent this from happening, the group said the government should be clear on its intent to implement the law.
“Strong signals must be sent as regards the certainty and consistency of this reform,” it said, adding that the government should not break its commitment to make rice more affordable for all Filipinos, while implementing measures that will improve competitiveness of rice farmers.
“AER calls on the President (Rodrigo R. Duterte) to stay the course in implementing the Rice Tariffication Law. We call on the swift implementation of mitigating measures to address the plight of the Filipino rice farmers,” it said.
The Rice Tariffication Law took effect in March, liberalizing rice imports. The large volumes of cheap foreign rice on the market weakened the bargaining position of farmers against the traders they sell palay to.
According to the Bureau of Customs (BoC), rice imported between March and October totaled 1.87 million metric tons (MT).
The price of palay has also been declining since March. The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said that in the fourth week of October, palay prices were at P15.43 per kilo, down 0.4%, week-on-week, and down 24.2%, year-on-year.
On Sunday, GMA News reported that Mr. Duterte has ordered the suspension of rice imports. Presidential Spokesperson Salvador S. Panelo then said on Monday that no order has been officially issued yet.
When asked about the government’s position, Agriculture Secretary William D. Dar said at a news conference Tuesday in Quezon City: “I think the Palace has clarified things, so (the policy remains) the same. (We are practicing) free trade… Let’s just be fair in pursuing this free trade, but the government will be doing its best also to help the affected palay farmers.” — Vincent Mariel P. Galang

House will review proposal to repeal rice tariffication law


Description: https://businessmirror.com.ph/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/broader01-103119-696x411.jpgThis file photo shows an assortment of commercial rice on sale at a grocery store in Antipolo City.
THE leadership of the House of Representatives on Tuesday said it will study the proposals repealing the rice tariffication law (RTL).
This after Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano and Majority Leader Ferdinand Martin Romualdez along with other House leaders received the 50,000 signatures gathered by Bantay Bigas calling for the repeal of the law, which took effect just last March.
Cayetano said that they are open to the proposal and would study all options to help farmers affected by the RTL, who have groaned under deep cuts to their income with the surge in imports as a result of liberalization.
Romualdez, chairman of the House Committee on Rules, also vowed to hear the proposal of other lawmakers to address the impact of RTL, saying “everyone deserves to be heard.”
On February 2019, Republic Act (RA) 11203 entitled, “An Act Liberalizing the Importation, Exportation and Trading of Rice, Lifting for the Purpose the Quantitative Import Restriction on Rice, and For Other Purposes” was enacted to help support the local rice industry specifically by creating a “Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund.”
For his part, House Committee on Agriculture and Food Chairman Wilfrido Mark Enverga said suspension of rice importation will help farmers against losses due to the RTL.
“Definitely a call for suspension of rice importation and/or raising the safeguard measures will ease the impacts of the rice liberalization law,” he added.

December discussions

According to Enverga, his committee will deliberate all the proposals amending, as well as repealing the RTL next month.
“There are bills repealing and amending the RTL. These measures will be scheduled this December for deliberations,” Enverga said.
“It is a point of consideration for President Duterte. We will welcome any measure that will cushion the immediate impacts of the law to our rice farmers,” he added. Currently, there are five pending bills and resolutions repealing and amending Republic Act 11203 or the RTL.
Last week, Bantay Bigas and the National Federation of Peasant Women (Amihan) submitted a petition to the House urging the leadership of the chamber to repeal the RTL.
The groups said their petition was signed by 50,000 farmers in top rice-producing provinces, including Nueva Ecija, Isabela, Pangasinan, Cagayan, Iloilo, Camarines Sur, Tarlac and Leyte.
“We strongly hope that the House of Representatives heeds the noble demands of the Filipino people for the attainment of national food security based on self-sufficiency and self-reliance, free from import dependence and grounded on strengthened tenurial rights of rice farmers in the country,” the petition said.

Reiterated

Meanwhile, House Committee on Ways and Means Chairman Joey Salceda on Tuesday reiterated that the national government has three options, including requesting Congress to impose quatitative restrictions, to stop farmers from incurring losses due to RTL.
According to Salceda, the sudden drop in palay prices is due to increased local harvest and the huge volume of imported rice with the RTL.
One of the options, Salceda said, is for President Duterte to ask Congress for special powers to impose the quantitative restrictions, which was repealed in the passage of RTL last year.
With the surge of rice imports and injury to domestic industry the other option the government may invoke, Salceda said, is Republic Act 8800 or the Safeguards Law to impose 30 percent to 80 percent tariff on imported rice outside the Minimum Access Volume (MAV) of 350,000 metric tons.  “RA 8800 is well recognized under our commitments with the WTO [World Trade Organization] and the provisional measure has a maximum period of one year,” he said.
The third option, Salceda said, is for the government to provide cash transfers to marginal small-lot farmers and concessional loans to big rice farmers. The lawmaker said a total of 2.1 million farmers will benefit from these options.

Vietnam’s rice price surprisingly low despite high quality

Vietnam is famous as one of the world's biggest rice exporters, but its export price is low.
Vietnam’s ST24 rice variety has been recognized as the best in the world at The Rice Trader (TRT) World Rice Conference 2019 in Manila. The rice variety was created by Ho Quang Cua and a group of high-quality rice producers in Soc Trang province.
Description: Vietnam’s rice price surprisingly low despite high quality


Prior to that, at the TRF in Malaysia in 2015 and Macau (China) in 2017, two Vietnamese rice varieties, Loc Troi 1 (developed by Loc Troi Group) and ST 24 were listed among top 3 best rice varieties.

Meanwhile, at the 5th Continental Rice Trade Conference held in China in 2018, Loc Troi 28 won the first price among fragrant rice varieties, while OM 18, also developed by Loc Troi Group, won second prize among white rice varieties.

Pham Thai Binh, general director of Trung An Hi-tech Agriculture, affirmed that Vietnam’s rice is not inferior to the rice of any other country.

According to Nguyen Trung Kien, deputy chair of the Vietnam Food Association, scented rice and long-grain white rice exports account for 70 percent of total exports.
Description: http://res.vietnamnet.vn/VietNamNet/Standard/v2015/images/quote-icon.png
Vietnam’s ST24 rice variety has been recognized as the best in the world at The Rice Trader (TRT) World Rice Conference 2019 in Manila. The rice variety was created by Ho Quang Cua and a group of high-quality rice producers in Soc Trang province.
However, Vietnam’s rice export prices are very low compared with other export countries. Binh said Vietnam’s ST 24 rice sells for $750-800 per ton, while Thailand’s rice with the same quality is priced at $1,100-1,200 per ton.
Cambodia’s rice, which has suality just equal to Vietnam’s ST 5, can also sell for $600 per ton in the world market. Meanwhile, Vietnam sells ST 5 at $550 per ton only.

“Thailand and Cambodia can sell rice for better prices because they are better at branding, which gains customers’ confidence. Vietnam’s rice has premium quality, but it is little known in the world market.” Binh said.

“This explains why Vietnam cannot earn much more money even though it has shifted to export high-quality instead of low-cost rice,” he explained.

Nguyen Dinh Bich, a respected trade expert, commented that Vietnam rice varieties are recognized as the best in the world, which shows that Vietnam now pays attention to making high-quality products.

However, he said, most of the varieties that won high prizes are still in small-scale production.

One year ago, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) officially introduced the logo of Vietnam’s national rice. However, to date, no export consignment has been sold with the logo on the packs.  
Thanh Mai

Transport strike won't affect rice market, says food minister

·       Description: https://d30fl32nd2baj9.cloudfront.net/media/2019/11/20/sadhan-majumdar-food-minister-201119-01.jpg/ALTERNATES/w640/sadhan-majumdar-food+minister-201119-01.jpg
The ongoing transport strike over the new road traffic law will not adversely affect the rice market even if it is prolonged by another 10 days, Food Minister Sadhan Chandra Majumder has said.
Speaking to reporters ahead of a meeting with mill owners on Wednesday, the minister said the market in Dhaka will not be affected 'in the slightest' due to the existing rice stocks at small and large markets.
"I can guarantee that there won't be any impact even if the strike continues for the next 10 days."
Buses remained grounded in several districts in the country's south-western and northern regions for the last two days after transport workers 'willingly' abstained from work.
Long-haul bus services on the Dhaka-Chattogram, Dhaka-Sylhet and Dhaka-Tangail routes were impeded by protesters on Wednesday morning.
Description: https://d30fl32nd2baj9.cloudfront.net/media/2019/11/20/sadhan-majumdar-food-minister-201119-02.jpg/ALTERNATES/w640/sadhan-majumdar-food+minister-201119-02.jpg
A network of truckers and lorry owners also joined the strike on Wednesday morning leaving many businesses to suffer as a result.
The minister acknowledged a four-taka rise in retail prices of Miniket rice, but said there is no logical reason for the hike.
"After monitoring the mills and markets, we have found that there isn't any shortage of rice in stock. There's no need to import rice. Instead, we are ready to export the product."
The food ministry has written to the home ministry to prevent any attempt to raise the price of rice, said Sadhan. The Directorate of National Consumer Rights Protection and the commerce ministry have also been informed of the matter.
"We won't tolerate any attempt to raise the price by anyone."

Govt to purchase rice through app this Aman season

Sun Online Desk

20th November, 2019 09:34:30

Description: Govt to purchase rice through app this Aman season
The government has planned to purchase rice from farmers through digital Apps for the first time in the upcoming Aman season.
In this experimental move, the government will purchase rice from 16 upazilas of 8 divisions through an app named ‘Krishoker App’.
The app has been developed for the farmer so that they could sell their produced paddy directly to the government.
After downloading the app, it can be used easily on a smartphone. Farmers have to register through the app providing their national ID number and phone number. In case of not having a mobile, the farmer can go to the upazila digital center and use the app there.
The officers of Directorate General of Food said the government will start their experimental process of collecting paddy from 20 November and from December 1 they will start collecting rice. Purchasing will continue till February 28.
The Food Department of the country hopes that this process will curb the irregularities and corruption in rice collection.
If this experimental digital purchasing process goes well, the process will be implemented widely in the next Boro season.
Dr. Mosammat Nazmanara Khanum, the Director General of Directorate General of Food said, “We want our farmers to apply for selling rice from their home. If one does not have a smartphone he can use his relatives one or can get help from upazila digital centers.”
She said, earlier the rice were exchanged many hands before collected by the government. Now it can be solved.
Amon paddy will be collected through the app from the farmers of Savar, Gazipur Sadar, Mymensingh Sadar, Jamalpur Sadar, Brahmanbaria Sadar, Comilla Sadar south, Barisal Sadar, Bhola Sadar, Naogaon Sadar, Bogra Sadar, Rangpur Sadar, Dinajpur Sadar, Jhenaidah Sadar, Jessore Sadar, Habiganj Sadar and Moulvibazar Sadar Upazila.

Rice price is stable: Food minister

BSS

19th November, 2019 08:38:42

Description: Rice price is stable: Food minister
Food Minister Sadhan Chandra Majumder said on Tuesday the rice price is stable in the country as the government kept the rice distribution programme uninterrupted for 50 lakh poor people.
“As per the electoral pledge of the ruling Awami League, the government is continuously distributing rice among the poor at a price of Taka 10 per kg, which has kept the rice price stable across the country,” he said.
The minister was addressing a triennial council of the Awami League at Ghatnagar Union under Porsha Upazila  this afternoon.
Claiming that the farmers are now getting fair price for their products, the minister said the country is not facing any irrigation crisis and that’s why the rice production has increased significantly.
He said farmers had to die for fertilizer during the BNP regime, but it is now easily available for the farmers.
Chaired by Ghatnagar Union Awami League President M Asgar Ali, the meeting also addressed, among others, by District Awami League vice-president M Abdur Rahman, Organizing Secretary Jabed Jahangir Sohel and Deputy Publicity Secretary Ranjet Sarker.

Minister to mill owners: Do not increase rice prices
Published at 02:26 pm November 20th, 2019
Description: web-rice-paddy
Varieties of rice Mehedi Hasan/Dhaka Tribune

A cell has been formed to monitor the market
Food Minister Sadhan Chandra Majumder has warned against increasing rice prices, saying the country has an adequate stockpile of food grain.
“There is no reason to hike the prices. Stern action will be taken against those involved in increasing rice prices,” he said, after a views exchange meeting with rice mill owners, at the Secretariat on Wednesday.
A cell has been formed to monitor the market round the clock and wholesale traders have been given directives in this regard, he added.
Minister Sadhan said the annual demand for rice is 28,416,710 tons, reports UNB. 
He said: “About 1,459,000 tons of rice and wheat are in stock and 1,113,303 tons are available at state-owned warehouses.” 
“Please do not raise the price of rice,” he requested the wholesalers.

No reason to hike rice prices: Minister

November 20, 2019 / LAST MODIFIED: 02:14 PM, November 20, 2019

 

Description: https://assetsds.cdnedge.bluemix.net/sites/default/files/styles/big_2/public/feature/images/rice-1_1.jpg?itok=Er9Iaigp
Photo: Collected
UNB, Dhaka
Food Minister Sadhan Chandra Majumder today warned against increasing rice prices, saying the country has an adequate stockpile of food grain.  

"There's no reason to hike the prices. Stern action will be taken against those involved in raising rice prices," he told reporters after a view-exchange meeting with rice mill owners at the Secretariat.

A cell has been formed to monitor the market round the clock and wholesale traders have been given directives in this regard, he said.

Minister Sadhan said the annual demand for rice is 2,84,16710 metric tonnes. "About 14.59 lakh mts of rice and wheat are in stock and 11,13,303 metric tonnes are available at state-owned warehouses," he said.

"Please don't raise the price of rice," he requested wholesalers.

China reduces greenhouse gas emissions in rice production: study

Source: Xinhua| 2019-11-21 17:05:05|Editor: Xiang Bo
BEIJING, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- The greenhouse gas emissions from China's rice fields have been reduced by 70 percent over the past five decades, according to a recent Chinese study.
China's rice agriculture, a primary source of greenhouse gas emissions, has experienced great changes in the last five decades due to changes in dominant varieties and farming practices. Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences comprehensively assessed the impacts of these changes on greenhouse gas emissions.
Through large-scale variety comparison, field monitoring and historical data mining, researchers found that China's average yield of rice has increased by 130 percent over the past five decades. With rice planting area shifting northwards, the adoption of high-yielding varieties and innovation in irrigation systems, the greenhouse gas emissions from China's rice fields have been reduced by 70 percent, with the reduction of methane emissions most significant.
The findings illustrate that it is possible to enhance rice productivity at reduced environmental costs through screening for low emission varieties and agronomic techniques. Future innovations should ensure that rice farming progressively adapts to climate change, while continuing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to the study.
The study was published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

[ANALYSIS] Duterte’s ban on rice imports: Enough of these capricious policies

Was rice tariffication a miscalculation by Duterte? Did he not anticipate that rice prices would plummet? Was he ill-advised by the economic team?
JC Punongbayan
Published 1:31 PM, November 21, 2019
Updated 1:31 PM, November 21, 2019
You might call it policy-making by trial-and-error.
In a recent late night press conference, following days of speculation, President Rodrigo Duterte ordered Agriculture Secretary William Dar to stop all importation of rice and buy more rice from our local farmers.
Said Duterte, “Kung gusto talaga nating walang problema, bilhin lahat ng produce ng farmers….Para ‘yung farmers, may resulta sa pawis nila.” (To avoid problems let’s buy all the produce of farmers. So their efforts will pay off.)
Some sectors are hailing these pronouncements, which they expect will aid rice farmers whose incomes have been wiped out by the recent Rice Tariffication Act.
But let’s not forget that Duterte himself signed the Rice Tariffication Act on Valentine’s Day this year, resulting in the massive wave of rice imports. Now, capriciously, Duterte wants to reverse his very own policy.
There are ways to help out our embattled rice farmers without banning rice imports altogether. In fact, such a ban might only backfire.
Not bad per se
Rice tariffication per se was not bad.
It ended the decades-long monopoly of the National Food Authority (NFA) in the importation of rice, which not only caused perennial shortages and surpluses but also strained our government’s coffers no end. (READ: Will rice tariffication live up to its promise?)
Before, the NFA used to set a quota on the total amount of rice our country can import. Now, just about anyone can import rice as long as they pay the necessary import taxes (also called tariffs).
Indeed, rice tariffication flooded the domestic market with foreign rice and depressed rice prices everywhere. The US Department of Agriculture estimates, in fact, that by end of 2019 the Philippines will likely become the world’s largest rice importer, beating China.
Wipeout
Government policymakers expected – indeed intended – for rice prices to go down with rice tariffication. What surprised them, though, was the extent that this happened.
Figure 1 below shows that by end of October farmgate prices of palay (unhusked rice) dropped by about 24% relative to last year. Meanwhile, retail prices of well-milled and regular-milled rice dropped by 13% and 17%, respectively.
Figure 1.
Although falling rice prices are a boon to rice consumers, they spell lower incomes for millions of rice farmers nationwide – although rice prices did fall at different rates across the regions, as shown in the graphs made by my friend AJ Montesa (Figure 2).
Description: https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1168767430417477632/iH02X0Ms_bigger.jpg

Some stuff on falling palay prices
Description: View image on Twitter Description: View image on Twitter Description: View image on Twitter Description: View image on Twitter


Figure 2.
Proponents of rice tariffication anticipated such hardships on our farmers. That is why they earmarked P10-billion worth of tariff revenues – also called the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF) – to help tide over our farmers.
But this may not be enough.
The Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) recently came up with a study showing that rice farmers across the country have suffered about P61.8 billion in lost incomes.
Other Stories

Duterte orders suspension of rice importation


Malacañang says no order to suspend rice importation


DOH is '1000%' in support of vaping ban

That’s more than 6 times the size of RCEF, and the Rice Tariffication Act is barely a year old. Such income losses might even balloon to P130 billion come peak harvest season.
Absent “immediate measures to cushion the adverse effects” of rice tariffication, PhilRice suggests lots of rice farmers will be dissuaded from planting rice in the future.
Import ban
Besides RCEF, politicians are mulling a number of other palliative measures, some more helpful than others. Others still might, in fact, do more harm than good.
Duterte’s recent rice import ban is arguably the most knee-jerk proposal of all – one that he seemingly came up with on his own sans the advice of his economic team.
The economic managers are flatly against it. Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia said it might bring us “back to where we were last year and the poor will suffer.”
Their objection is rooted in the fact that limited imports will likely tighten domestic supply, push up rice prices, and stoke inflation just like last year.
But there’s a bigger concern: rice traders.
In the wake of rice tariffication, rice traders are reportedly over-importing and hoarding rice in big warehouses. At the same time, they’re deliberately not buying from our local farmers, thus pressuring farmgate prices downward.
As a result of traders’ anticompetitive behaviors, consumers pay more than they need to while farmers receive less. This artificial scarcity drives the wedge you see in Figure 1 between farmgate palay prices (orange) and commercial rice prices (blue and green).
Duterte’s rice import ban paves the way for higher prices, thus providing an opportunity for rice traders to profit immensely once they release their stocks of hoarded rice into the market.
Unless government significantly erodes the market power of these rice traders – behaving as a cartel – it will be hard to contain the ill effects of rice tariffication.
In place of a rice import ban, a number of people have alternatively suggested rice tariff hikes – also called special safeguard duties – to stem the inflow of rice from abroad.
But such tariff hikes, depending on their size, might only have a similar effect as Duterte’s import ban.
Local purchases
Government is also planning to aggressively purchase more rice from our local farmers.
For their part, the House of Representatives already realigned P3.5 billion in the proposed 2020 budget so the agriculture department could purchase more palay directly from farmers.
On top of this, both houses of Congress also passed a measure that would authorize the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to buy rice from our farmers worth nearly P7 billion.
Basically this means that in some provinces beneficiaries of the government’s flagship antipoverty program – called Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program or 4Ps – will begin to receive actual sacks of rice in place of P600 worth of monthly rice subsidies.
Although seemingly well-meaning, some economists are frowning upon this move.
Aside from the fact that handing out rice to more than 4 million poor families will surely prove to be a logistical nightmare, the poor are likely better off with cash which gives them more flexibility in buying the goods and services they truly need day-to-day.
Government cannot second-guess the poor and simply assume they just need more rice.
Capricious policy-making
Right now the economic team must be scratching their heads. Despite their misgivings, Duterte went ahead to unilaterally stop rice importation altogether.
Was rice tariffication a miscalculation by Duterte? Did he not anticipate that rice prices would plummet? Was he ill-advised by the economic team?
At any rate, Duterte’s glaring policy reversal on rice imports only adds to the growing sense of policy uncertainty that has come to be associated with his administration. (READ: How Duterte’s whims and caprices hurt the economy)
Far from being “decisive” – as the economic managers put it – Duterte’s rice policy comes off as exceedingly capricious.
Till when do we put up with this? – Rappler.com

The author is a PhD candidate at the UP School of Economics. His views are independent of the views of his affiliations. Thanks to AJ Montesa for sharing his graphs on provincial rice price movements. Follow JC on Twitter (@jcpunongbayan) and Usapang Econ (usapangecon.com).

Switching back to coarse cereals can offer multiple benefits: Study

T V Jayan  New Delhi | Updated on November 21, 2019  Published on November 21, 2019
Description: https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/economy/agri-business/knoq8b/article30029440.ece/alternates/WIDE_435/BL21-BAJRA
India can benefit substantially on multiple fronts such as nutritional security, energy and water utilisation and even cut its greenhouse gas emissions if it promotes the cultivation of coarse cereals, showed a study by researchers from India, Austria and the US.
During the Green Revolution of the 1960s and the 1970s, the focus has mainly been on increasing rice and wheat output. As a result, a large number of farmers shifted away from more nutritious coarse cereals to high-yielding crops such as rice, leading to narrowing in the diversity of cultivated crops.

Rice focus

Between 1966 and 2011, the total cropped area for monsoon cereals remained nearly constant, but harvested areas dedicated to monsoon rice increased from 52 per cent to 67 per cent. Currently, rice accounts for 74 per cent of kharif cereals production, 80 per cent of energy and 81 per cent of water used for cereal production in the season. Besides, nearly 90 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions from kharif cereals production comes from rice alone. In a study published in the prestigious journal, Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, the scientists, led by Ruth DeFries and Kyle Davis of Columbia University in the US, on Tuesday, showed that there can be multiple benefits if farmers were encouraged to switch back to coarse cereals. They found that increasing combined calories supplied by coarse cereals such as finger millet, pearl millet and sorghum from the present 14 per cent to 21-32 per cent can help improve the nutritive value of food, apart from reducing irrigation demand, energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.

Holistic analysis

“This is the first time that the various nutritional and environmental aspects, including water use, climate resilience, and greenhouse gas emissions, of coarse cereals have been analysed in a holistic manner,” DeFries of the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology at Columbia University told BusinessLine.
The authors found that planting more coarse cereals could on average increase available protein by 1-5 per cent, increase iron supply by between 5-49 per cent; increase climate resilience (1-13 per cent fewer calories would be lost during times of drought); and reduce GHG emissions by 2-13 per cent. The diversification of crops would also lower demand for irrigation water by 3-21 per cent and reduce energy use by 2-12 per cent, while maintaining calorie production and using the same amount of cropland.
“To make agriculture more sustainable, it's important that we think beyond just increasing food supply and also find solutions that can benefit nutrition, farmers, and the environment. This study shows that there are real opportunities to do just that. India can sustainably enhance its food supply if farmers plant less rice and more nutritious and environment-friendly crops such as finger millet, pearl millet, and sorghum,” said lead author Kyle Davis, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Data Science Institute at Columbia University, New York.
DeFries said some States in India are starting to include coarse cereals in their public distribution systems, which promotes cultivation, as would increased research attention on improving yields of coarse cereals. Davis said it was important for the governments to increase public awareness on the nutritional and environmental benefits of coarse cereals.
“One key insight from this study was that despite coarse grains having lower yields on average, there are enough regions where this is not the case. A non-trivial shift away from rice can therefore occur without reducing overall production,” said study co-author Narasimha Rao, a researcher at the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis in Austria.
The authors point out that the Indian Government is currently promoting the increased production and consumption of these nutri-cereals — efforts that they say will be important to protect farmers’ livelihoods and increase the cultural acceptability of these grains.
With nearly 200 million undernourished people in India, alongside widespread groundwater depletion and the need to adapt to climate change, increasing the supply of nutricereals may be an important part of improving the country's food security, they said.
Among Indian authors of the study were Ashwini Chhatre and Nabin Pradhan of the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad and Suparna Ghosh-Jerath of New Delhi-based Public Health Foundation of India.
Published on November 21, 2019

YOUR AD BLOCKER ISAFFECTING QUALITY BUSINESS REPORTING

Support The Hindu BusinessLine's new online ad-free experience by subscribing now.
57K Negrense farmers to get free certified seeds from PhilRice
By Erwin Nicavera  November 20, 2019, 5:10 pm
FREE RICE SEEDS. Free certified seeds distributed by the Philippine Rice Research Institute to Negrense farmers on Tuesday (Nov. 19, 2019). Some 57,000 farmers in Negros Occidental will benefit from the program as part of the implementation of the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund. (Photo courtesy of PIO Negros Occidental)
BACOLOD CITY -- The Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) has started distributing free certified seeds worth PHP174 million to some 57,000 Negrense farmers as part of the implementation of the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF).
PhilRice-Negros Occidental Director Gerardo Estoy Jr. said they initially released the seed allocation for two local government units and will complete the distribution to the 29 remaining towns and cities in the province by the second week of December, in time for the planting season.
On Tuesday, Estoy was joined by provincial officials led by Governor Eugenio Jose Lacson during the ceremonial distribution held at the Capitol grounds here, where farmers from Valladolid received 2,773 bags of certified rice seeds.
The day before, 2,035.5 bags were released to farmers in Sipalay City.
Estoy said that Negros Occidental has a total allocation of 57,118.25 bags, covering 51,118.25 hectares per cropping season.
Each bag of certified rice seeds costs PHP1,520, which means the province has an allocation of almost PHP87 million for every cropping.
The PhilRice official said they also provided farmers training on various farming technologies to help them increase their yield and reduce losses.
“The free seeds will have no use if farmers do not know the proper ways or new technologies in rice production,” Estoy said.
Created under Republic Act 11203 or the Rice Tarrification Law, the RCEF, or Rice Fund, is sourced from the tariff revenues of the rice being imported by the country.
Through the program, the government mainly aims to help improve the competitiveness of Filipino rice farmers and augment their income while sustaining resilience and responsiveness.
The RCEF has an annual appropriation of PHP10 billion for the next six years. Of which, 50 percent will be allotted for rice farm machinery and equipment; 30 percent, rice seed development, propagation, and promotion; 10 percent, expanded rice credit assistance; and 10 percent, rice extension services. (PNA)

A trail blazer of China's hybrid rice research

By Mi Xingang
Yan Longan talks with reporters at the Jiangxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Nanchang city, Jiangxi province, on Oct. 26, 2019. [Photo by Mi Xingang/China.org.cn]
"As an agriculture researcher, my only goal is to improve people's livelihood," said Yan Longan, a renowned hybrid rice expert and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, during an interview with China.org.cn on Oct. 26. 
Being a specialist on crop genetics and breeding, Yan has spent over 50 years on hybrid rice research, application and promotion. 
Born into a poor family in 1937 in a remote village of Pingxiang city, Jiangxi province, he experienced the life of privation and the torture of near starvation, which made him determined to see that everyone could have sufficient food when he grew up.
After being enrolled in the Jiangxi Agricultural College in 1958, he began to concentrate on agricultural science study and took immense interests on genetics. "Work hard and try to improve rice yields," Yan recalled his father's expectations towards him then. Four years of study under harsh conditions strengthened his determination to conquer poverty and starvation.
After graduation in 1962, Yan conducted research on dwarf rice breeding in Pingxiang and bred several improved varieties. In 1970, he turned to hybrid rice research and the next year, he was selected to follow Yuan Longping, who had initiated China's rice heterosis application research in the 1960s, for further study at the Nanhong Farm in Hainan province. 
He took part in the selection and breeding of the rice sterility line. In 1972, after an arduous endeavor, Yan became China's first researcher to succeed in breeding the Wild Aborted Type Indica Male Sterile Line -- Zhenxian 97, with epoch-making significance in realizing the matching of "three lines," namely sterile, maintainer and restorer lines, in China's hybrid rice breeding.
As for the hard process of breeding the Zhenxian 97, Yan recalled as follows: "My colleague and I got 48 seeds after pollination for over 300 spikelets under the scorching sun in Hainan and brought them back to Pingxiang. The next March, we sowed them, but seven days later, nothing happened. We dug them out and found they were all intact."
Yan felt so confused. However, after consulting experts, he realized they might have a longer dormancy period. He recalled with excitement: "Eventually, we cleared all of them, covered them with moist cotton and plastic, and put them on pockets of our underwear. To our great surprise, a further seven days later, all of them sprouted."
Among the same type, the sterile line of Zhenxian 97 has been applied in production for the longest period as it's still used today; it can create matching combinations in the largest number; its promoted planting area is also the largest and its adaptability is the strongest, said Yu Chuanyuan, current vice-president of the Jiangxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences. 
According to Ministry of Agriculture statistics, from 1982 to 2003, the Xianyou series of hybrid rice developed by the Zhenxian 97 was promoted in fields across China totaling 124.93 million hectares, accounting for 47.59% of the total hybrid rice planting area in the country. 
It helped increase rice output by 187.44 billion kilograms during this period. Yan made a significant contribution to food security of China, according to Yu.

Biofortified CRISPR-edited rice could help battle global vitamin A deficiency

ISAAA | November 20, 2019
Description: d cd f oCorneal scarring after vitamin A deficiency. Image: John DC Anderson
Genome editing could be an alternative approach to improve the vitamin A content of crops, according to a study by Akira Endo and colleagues at the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization and Ishikawa Prefectural University in Japan. The results of the study are published in Rice.
Beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A, is a vital target for biofortification of crops to aiming to address the problem of vitamin A deficiency prevalent in developing countries. In a previous study, it was reported that dominant expression of splicing variants in the Orange (Orgene causes beta-carotene accumulation in cauliflower curd. In Endo and team’s study, they focused on rice’s Orange gene (Osor) and tested if they could increase the beta-carotene content of rice callus using CRISPR-Cas9. The transformed calli turned orange, indicating hyper-accumulation of beta-carotene. Molecular analyses indicated that orange-colored calli are caused by an abundance of in-frame aberrant Osor transcripts, while out-of-frame mutation was not associated with orange color.

Based on the findings, the researchers concluded that directed gene modification of Osor gene using CRISPR-Cas9-mediated genome editing leads to beta-carotene fortification in rice calli. This presents an alternative approach to improving beta-carotene accumulation in crops.

Border Closure: Navy impounds 1,425 bags of smuggled rice in Akwa Ibom


 
Description: https://dailypost.ng/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/20191119_122621.jpg
As the borders in Nigeria remain closed, the Nigerian Navy, Forward Operating Base, Ibaka, Mbo local government area in Akwa Ibom State, said it has seized about 1,425 bags of rice smugled into the state between 12th and 18th November 2019.
The command also arrested 20 suspected smugglers within the period and seized four wooden boats used in carrying the rice.
The Commanding Officer, FOB, Navy Captain Peter Yilme while addressing the media, said Navy gunboats, during patrols, seized the boats on Effiat waterways, carrying 50kg bags of rice brought in from the Republic of Cameroon.
While handing over the suspects and items to the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Yilme said the Nigerian Navy has zero tolerance for criminality and warned smugglers to desist from the act, especially within FOB, Ibaka area of operation.
Yilme, who was represented by the Base Operations Officer, Lieutenant Commander Kabiru Yusuf, said the base, in the last one month handed over 3,800 bags of smuggled rice, 60 drums of illegally refined Automated Gas Oil (AGO), and 60 suspects to the Customs component of Operation Swift Response for necessary action.
“Four wooden boats carrying a combined 1,425 bags of 50kg parboiled rice suspected to be smuggled into the country and 20 suspects were impounded and arrested by the Forward Operating Base, Ibaka.
“The handover of the 20 suspects and 1,425 bags of rice on Tuesday 19 November, 2019 goes to show the resolve of the Base not to relent on its oars. The arrests were made between November 12 -18, 2019.
“I commend the untiring efforts of the officers and ratings in ensuring the mandate and tasks of the Base are achieved. I also appreciate the immense effort of the Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral I. E. Ibas for providing the necessary platform and logistic support for the Base to carry out its operations,” he said.
Receiving the 20 suspects from the Nigerian Navy, Deputy Superintendent of Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Alabi, Adedokun commended the Navy for the cooperation existing between them, and for the frequent arrests.
One of the suspects, Peter Okon, a married man with three children from Okobo local government area of Akwa Ibom State, said joblessness led him to smuggling the rice.
He said it was his first time in smuggling rice and that the owner of the rice promised to pay him N2,000 to bring in 200 bags of rice from Cameroon to Nigeria.
He noted that since he lives in the creeks in Cameroon, he had no knowledge that the Federal Government had closed the borders to stop the smuggling of rice into Nigeria.
He said, “As you can see, we are jobless people. I am a worker in the boat and the owner of the rice gave me N2,000 to bring in 200 bags of rice from Cameroon. This is my first time; I live in the creeks in Cameroon and I have three children to feed”.
Another suspect, 23-year-old Samuel Etim from Oron local government area of Akwa Ibom State said he was not involved in smuggling the seized rice.
He stated that he was a fisherman in Bakassi and boarded the rice boat because he had no money to pay his fare.
“I don’t know anything about the rice. I joined the boat carrying the rice from Bakassi because I didn’t have money to pay for my fares,” he said.


1 comment:





  1. backpage New River Valley



    Backpage New River Valley, Virginia - Backpage was one of the most popular classified sites for escorts and it was used by several escorts and massage parlors for posting ads. It was loved by everyone.



    https://harlothub.com/united-states/virginia/new-river-valley/categories/

    ReplyDelete