Wednesday, March 04, 2020

3rd March,2020 Daily Global Regional Local Rice E-Newsletter


ARC and PLC Program March 16 Deadline Approaches 

WASHINGTON, DC -- The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency (FSA) is encouraging producers to enroll in the Agriculture Risk (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) programs before the March 16 deadline for the crop year 2019.

"Because of the importance and complexities of the ARC and PLC programs, please do not wait to start the enrollment process," said FSA Administrator Richard Fordyce.  "Please call your FSA county office and make an appointment to ensure your elections are made and contracts signed ahead of the deadline."

Until March 16, producers who have not yet enrolled in ARC or PLC for 2019 can enroll for both 2019 and 2020 during the same visit to an FSA county office.  A one-time opportunity to update PLC payment yields could be beneficial to producers in some areas beginning with crop year 2020.  Resources for producers including a yield update calculator can be found here or here under the 'Resources' tab.

The programs cover the following commodities:  barley, canola, large and small chickpeas, corn, crambe, flaxseed, grain sorghum, lentils, mustard seed, oats, peanuts, dry peas, rapeseed, long grain rice, medium and short grain rice, safflower seed, seed cotton, sesame, soybeans, sunflower seed, temperate japonica rice, and wheat.

ARC and PLC election decision tools developed by the Agricultural and Food Policy Center (AFPC) at Texas A&M University, in conjunction with the Food and Agricultural Policy Institute (FAPRI) at the University of Missouri, are available 
here.  To enroll, contact your FSA county office for an appointment.

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World Market Price Group Meets at Conclusion of GAC 

WASHINGTON, DC -- Following the wrap-up of last week's USA Rice Government Affairs Conference, the USA Rice World Market Price Subcommittee met here for the first of their three meetings scheduled in 2020.  The Subcommittee met with representatives from the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), Farm Production and Conservation Mission Area, and the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS).

Because it is the middle of the annual marketing cycle and pre-planting season, discussions revolved around 2019 crop yields, predictions for 2020 planted acreage, and 2019/2020 marketing year exports.  NASS reminded participants to encourage their friends and neighbors to complete the upcoming set of surveys to better inform the 2020 NASS Prospective Plantings Report.  FAS staff shared that the World Market Price increase since the Subcommittee's October 2019 meeting can be attributed to increased prices by large exporters, including Thailand and Vietnam.

The Subcommittee is next scheduled to meet in May.



TikTok user uses rice to show Jeff Bezos' enormous wealth
Humphrey Yang pretended that one grain of rice was equivalent to $ 100,000 and then counted till $ 1 billion
Description: twitter-logo BusinessToday.In        Last Updated: March 2, 2020  | 18:06 IST
Description: TikTok user uses rice to show Jeff Bezos’ enormous wealth
One rice grain represented $ 100,000
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TikTok user Humphrey Yang took to the app to create an attention-grabbing visual representation of Jeff Bezos' net worth with grains of rice. The video later went viral on Twitter.  
Yang is a 32-year-old eCommerce consultant and freelancer from Silicon Valley, California. To make the video, Yang asked users to imagine that one grain of rice was equivalent to USD 100,000. He then counted ten such grains with the total coming to USD 1 million. Yang then continued to count the grains by hand till he reached 10,000, the representative amount now measuring up to USD 1 billion. 
Yang then took out a few grains from the USD 1 billion bunch, demonstrating how even after taking out millions of dollars the billion-dollar pile of rice looked the same. 
After his video went viral on Twitter, Yang decided to create a second video that especially represented  Jeff Bezos's net worth in rice form.
In the video titled "Rice. Part Two," Yang used a digital scale to measure the weight of the billion-dollar rice pile. He then goes to a shop to buys two big bags of rice. He brings the bags homes and then begins to count to the amount equivalent to  Jezz Bezos's net worth.
"Once I had that 10,000 grains of rice counted out I knew how much it weighed," Yang told Mashable in an email. "Then [I] multiplied it out to figure that Jeff Bezos' approximate net worth was around 58 pounds of rice."
The 58 pounds of rice thus measured was equivalent to USD 122 Billion, which was Jeff Bezos's net worth at the time of the shooting of the video. Bezo's pile was so huge that Yang was easily able to horizontally bury a desktop keyboard in it.
Yang, who started using TikTok at the end of 2019 because he "wanted to educate Gen-Z and young millennials on financial literacy," often shares financial and business-related advice with his followers. Yang said that he got the idea to represent money using rice from a youtube video he saw many years ago. Yang was satisfied with how his version turned out.
"The process was tedious, the cleanup was a mess, but the video was great! I am glad I got to tell a story, show viewers the scale of money, and hopefully educate them on how much a billion vs 100+ billion is," he said.
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Odisha Government Organises Krushi Odisha To Empower Its Farmers

1st March, 2020
‘Krushi Odisha’, the annual flagship five-day exhibition cum agriculture fair was organised by the Department of Agriculture and Farmers’ Empowerment, Government of Odisha in collaboration with FICCI. The fair was held from 20-24th January 2020 at Janata Maidan, Bhubaneswar. The mega program envisages leading farmers to profitability. Krushi Odisha takes into consideration various aspects of agriculture including farm income, implements, modern technology in farming, financial assistance to farmers and capacity building. The second day of Krushi Odisha is being celebrated as Cooperation and Banking Day.
The highlight of the Cooperation and Banking Day was that it was celebrated in the evening in presence of Dr Arun Kumar Sahoo, Hon’ble Minister for Agriculture and Farmers’ Empowerment, Fisheries and Animal Resources Development and Higher Education, Government of Odisha. A user guide, as well as a website on e-licensing for farmers, was launched by the Government of Odisha on the occasion.
The Hon’ble Minister said that Krushi Odisha is an opportune platform for development and awareness of farmers in the state and that the Naveen Patnaik-led government is working tirelessly towards enhancing the farmers’ income. The e-licensing website launched today will immensely help our farmer brothers. Dr. Arun Kumar Sahoo also visited the exhibition and stalls.
Description: https://dz01iyojmxk8t.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/22134126/DSC_1678.jpg“A user guide, as well as a website on e-licensing for farmers, was launched by the Government of Odisha on the occasion.”
The Chief Guest of the occasion, Sri Ranendra Pratap Swain, Hon’ble Minister for Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare Co-operation, invoked the Father of Nation Mahatma Gandhi while addressing the gathering. He said that Gandhiji always talked about empowering the farmers. He then went on to say that discussion on farmer suicide mitigation and decreasing dependence on imports for potato and onions should be made at forums like Krushi Odisha. He extended full support of his department towards farmer welfare. He also pointed out that while farmers over the country are facing losses, farmers in Odisha are seeing an upward trend in their income and lifestyle, thanks to the farmer-friendly policies of the state government.
The day consisted of two seminars and two pathshaalas running simultaneously from 10-1 pm and then 2-5 pm respectively. The first seminar of the day was on ‘Climate Smart Technology’ and ‘Water Resources Management for Improved Productivity in Agriculture’. The session was moderated by Mr Tapan Padhy, Director of Water and Forestry Programme, RCDC.
J.K. Rath, Chairman, FICCI MSME Committee, Odisha, introduced the panel, which included Tapan Padhy, Director of Water and Forestry Programme, RCDC, Mr Anjan Mandal, Chief of Sales and Marketing, SkyMet Weather, Dr Sangita Ladha, VP-Marketing and Business Development, Jain Irrigation and Pushpendra Johari, Sr VP, RMSI Noida.
Tapan Padhy discussed how climate change has outsmarted all of us and suggested ways and means of carrying out sustainable agriculture in the time of climate change.  Similarly, Anjan Mandal focused on forecasting technologies for agriculture supply chain management. He elaborated on the app developed by SkyMet Weather, SkyMitra, which helps in giving local farmers advance weather forecast in seven languages including English, Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu, Odia and Punjabi. He also informed that SkyMet has put up than 7,000 Automated Weather Stations (AWS) across the country, with over 100 AWS located in Odisha in Bhadrak, Balasore and Ganjam districts.
Dr Sangita Ladha is an M. Tech from IIT Kharagpur. She delved on the issues of greenhouse technology and precision farming. She displayed a video where her team planted a grapevine across 600 hectares of desert in Israel by using drip irrigation methods. The first paathshala of the day was on ‘Farm Mechanisation and Micro Irrigation for Minimising Production Cost’. The paathshala enlightened the audience on important facts like how Odisha uses power tillers more than any other state in the country. The paathshala lay stress on the fact that in order to increase production, we have to increase usage of farm machine tools from the existing 40 percent to a more advanced 90 percent, like the USA.
The second seminar of the day was on the topic: Sustainable Solutions for Agriculture in India with Special Focus on Odisha. Dr M Muthukumar, Director of Agriculture and Food Production, Govt. of Odisha was present on the occasion. He said that industrialisation and urbanisation have led to loss of farmland. He also pointed that Odisha has achieved doubling of farm income, but as we see, farm income has lessened while non-farm income has increased.
Session moderator Dr. Himanshu Pathak, Director, National Rice Research Institute (NRRI) welcomed everyone, from scientists to students and farmers, to the event. He said:
“In India, we have been cultivating paddy for the last 7,000 years. It has become a part not only of our food but also our culture. Rice is not just a business, it’s our heritage. No social or community program is complete without rice and it forms a big part of society in Odisha, India and in fact the whole of Asia.”
Dr. Arvind Kumar, Director, IRRI, International Rice Research Institute, South Asia Regional Centre (ISARC), stressed on the need for transforming a food-deficit Asia to a food secure one. He also said, “I don’t think there is a trade-off between sustainable agriculture and farmer’s profitability.”
Likewise, the second paathshala of the day focused on ‘Risk in Agriculture – Management and Mitigation’. The paathshala educated farmers on mitigation of problems faced by them right from sowing seeds, to harvesting their crops, and the insurance policy of the government of Odisha. The day was concluded by a cultural program that was thoroughly enjoyed by the audience.
Featured image provided by the author. 







 
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M&S to expand scheme where shoppers bring their own containers to fill with coffee, rice, pasta and cereal - after eco-friendly offerings outsold packaged products
·       Marks and Spencer announced plan to expand 'fill-your-own' container scheme 
·       The news follows a popular trial in a Southampton branch of the supermarket 
·       Found 25 of 44 'fill-your-own' products outsold the pre-packaged alternatives 
·       Come as eco-friendly shoppers turn away from throwaway plastic packaging
PUBLISHED: 14:28 GMT, 2 March 2020 | UPDATED: 20:32 GMT, 2 March 2020
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Marks and Spencer have announced plans to expand an eco-friendly refill scheme which allows shoppers to fill their containers with food from dispensers in their stores after the offerings outsold packaged products. 
The retailer's initial 'fill-your-own' shopping scheme at it's Southampton store has proved so popular with customers that it's now set to be expanded to further stores around the UK.   
Announcing the news, M&S said that 25 of it's 44 'fill-your-own' products were outselling the pre-packaged alternatives at the store, including porridge oats, basmati rice and milk chocolate raisins.  
The efforts by M&S are evidence of a major shift across all the major supermarkets - and other retailers - to reduce the use of throwaway plastic packaging, which is seen as wasteful and a threat to the environment and wildlife.
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Marks and Spencer have announced their eco-friendly 'fill-your-own' scheme will be expanded this month after a popular trial at a store in Southampton (pictured, shoppers using their own containers to purchase dried goods)  
Fill-your-own schemes have long-been popular at independent stores, where customers are invited to bring a container to replenish dried-food or pantry-food supplies. 
However in recent years, supermarket chains have taken to testing them in an effort to reduce single-use plastics.   
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The original trial in Southampton, which launched in December, offered 44 plastic packaging-free products from coffee and cereal to sweets and pasta at the Hedge End retail park store.  
It offered free, widely recyclable paper bags for customers who arrive at the store without containers to hand. 
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The retailer announced they'd be expanding the initiative to further stores after a successful trial at a store in Southampton  
Bestselling products on the scheme include M&S’s Triple Chocolate Crunch cereal, Whole Scottish Porridge Oats, Basmati Rice, Milk Chocolate Raisins, Single Origin Brazil Coffee and Fiorelli Pasta.  
After the success of the initiative, the trial will be extended to the firm's Manchester city centre store in March, before it looks at rolling the concept out at other shops across the country.  
M&S' move to encourage more sustainable retail practices across more of it stores highlights a clear shift in the UK's retail landscape towards sustainability as of late.
Will Broome, CEO and Founder of Ubamarket, an app which acts like a supermarket sat-nav, called the move by M&S 'extremely encouraging'.  
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The scheme allows shoppers to purchase dried goods, like coffee, pasta and rice, at a reduced rate if they bring their own container 
He revealed: 'It's extremely encouraging to see retailers such as M&S taking major steps towards creating a more sustainable future for the food retail sector, and retail across the board. 
'Sustainability is no longer just a buzzword; it is quickly becoming a necessity for retailers wanting to prosper and develop into a more environmentally conscious society, as widespread consumer demand and threat of impending legislation suggest that there is no turning back.' 
In recent weeks some of Britain's biggest retailers, including Asda and Tesco, have announced plans to cut down plastic waste, with Tesco removing plastic packaging from multipack tins and the launch of Asda's 'sustainability store'.
And in June last year, Waitrose launched a trial at a store in Oxford that involved taking more than 200 products out of their packaging and selling them loose to people who use their own containers. 
Eco-friendly couple launch Britain's first zero-waste supermarket
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Marks and Spencer to extend trial of fill-your-own scheme
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