Assam scientists develop high-protein, climate-smart rice varieties
Scientists of
Assam have developed a number of high-protein, climate smart, high-yielding and
aromatic climate-smart rice Sentinel Digital Desk
By : Sentinel
Digital Desk | 18 May 2020 8:29 AM AddThis Sharing Buttons Share to
: Scientists of
Assam have developed a number of high-protein, climate smart, high-yielding and
aromatic high-yielding varieties of rice that have shorter duration and that
remain erect even after ripening. The credit goes to the scientists of Gerua
(Hajo)-based RRL-RRS (Regional Rainfed Lowland Rice Research Station) under
ICAR-NRRL (Indian Council of Agricultural Research-National Rice Research Institute).
Also Read - CPI protest against ignorance towards migrant workers and poor
people Talking to The Sentinel, RRL-RRS, Gerua officer in-charge and Principal
Scientist Dr. Rupankar Bhagawati said, "Among the high-protein rice
variety, CR Dhan 310 is the world's first bio-fortified rice with 10.3 per cent
protein and around 20 ppm (parts per million) zinc.
While CR Dhan
309 has 10.2% protein, CR Dhan 311 has 10.1 per cent protein and zinc 21 ppm.
All these varieties of kharif rice have duration of 115-125 days and their
yield is five tonnes to six tonnes per hectare. Also Read - PPE kits for State
Disaster Response Force (SDRF) personnel during floods "The climate-smart
varieties of kharif rice CR Dhan 801 and CR Dhan 802 can survive under drought.
They also can survive under water when submerged for two weeks. Their duration
is 140-145 days and the yield varies from 5-6.5 tonnes per hectare.
"High-yielding varieties, CR Dhan 307, CR Dhan 500, CR Dhan 501, CR Dhan
505, CR Dhan 506 and CR Dhan 508 rice are lodging resistant, besides being
suitable for semi-deep and low-lying land cultivation.
Their duration
ranges from 145-160 days. The yield is 3.4-8 tonnes per hectare. Also Read -
Burah (Jame) Masjid committee cancels Eid prayers on Eid-ul-Fitr "We've
also developed an aromatic high-yielding variety of kharif rice – CR Dhan 909.
It has been developed and released from Assam. It is semi-dwarf rice with
strong aroma, good cooking quality, without lodging problem and is suitable for
rice flakes and confectionary products. Its duration is 140-145 days and yield
is 4.5-5.5 tonnes per hectare. "We've also developed four more
high-yielding varieties for all the three seasons – Ahu, Sali and Boro. They
are CR Dhan 601, BIRRI 75, BINA 17 and Chandrama. Their duration is 115-145
days, and the yield is 3.5-5.6 tonnes per hectare. "We request the farmers
to book for the seeds of all these varieties of rice till May 25, 2020 for the
next year's delivery. The price tag is Rs 72.50 per kg."
https://www.sentinelassam.com/guwahati-city/assam-scientists-develop-high-protein-climate-smart-rice-varieties-477392
https://www.sentinelassam.com/guwahati-city/assam-scientists-develop-high-protein-climate-smart-rice-varieties-477392
Cooler
climate led to the rise of rice around world
Monday
May 18 2020, 12.01am BST, The Times
Rice
was first cultivated 9,000 years ago in China. It diversified and spread as the
climate shifted
VISUAL CHINA GROUP/GETTY IMAGES
Forty-two
centuries ago, some of the earliest empires fell as the climate shifted. As
swathes of the world became cooler and drier the Old Kingdom in Egypt collapsed
and the great Akkadian Empire of Mesopotamia crumbled.
Evidence
has been found of natural calamities befalling the Indus Valley civilisation in
South Asia and the early Minoan culture of Crete. Now scientists have linked
this period to the rise of rice, the world’s most popular food. It is thought
that rice was first cultivated 9,000 years ago in the Yangtze valley in China.
It would conquer the planet as it evolved.
Researchers
have reconstructed the historical movement of rice across Asia by mapping the
genetics of more than 1,400 varieties. This included varieties of japonica and
indica,
Global Cooling Event 4,200 Years Ago Spurred Rice's
Evolution, Spread
Monday, May 18,
2020
A major global
cooling event that occurred 4,200 years ago may have led to the evolution of
new rice varieties and the spread of rice into both northern and southern Asia,
an international team of researchers has found.
Their study, published
in Nature Plants and led by the NYU Center for Genomics
and Systems Biology, uses a multidisciplinary approach to reconstruct the
history of rice and trace its migration throughout Asia.
Rice is one of
the most important crops worldwide, a staple for more than half of the global
population. It was first cultivated 9,000 years ago in the Yangtze Valley in
China and later spread across East, Southeast, and South Asia, followed by the
Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. In the process, rice evolved and
adapted to different environments, but little is known about the routes,
timing, and environmental forces involved in this spread.
In their study,
the researchers reconstructed the historical movement of rice across Asia using
whole-genome sequences of more than 1,400 varieties of rice—including varieties
of japonica and indica, two main subspecies of Asian rice—coupled with
geography, archaeology, and historical climate data.
For the first
4,000 years of its history, farming rice was largely confined to China, and
japonica was the subspecies grown. Then, a global cooling event 4,200 years
ago—also known as the 4.2k event, which is thought to have had widespread
consequences, including the collapse of civilizations from Mesopotamia to
China—coincided with japonica rice diversifying into temperate and tropical
varieties. The newly evolved temperate varieties spread in northern China,
Korea and Japan, while the tropical varieties and spread to Southeast Asia.
"This
abrupt climate change forced plants, including crops, to adapt," said
Rafal M. Gutaker, a postdoctoral associate at the NYU Center for Genomics and
Systems Biology and the study's lead author. "Our genomic data, as well as
paleoclimate modeling by our collaborators, show that the cooling event
occurred at the same time as the rise of temperate japonica, which grows in
milder regions. This cooling event also may have led to the migration of rice
agriculture and farmer communities into Southeast Asia."
"These
findings were then backed up by data from archaeological rice remains excavated
in Asia, which also showed that after the 4.2k event, tropical rice migrated south
while rice also adapted to northern latitudes as temperate varieties,"
said Michael D. Purugganan, the Silver Professor of Biology at NYU, who led the
study.
After the
global cooling event, tropical japonica rice continued to diversify. It reached
islands in Southeast Asia about 2,500 years ago, likely due to extensive trade
networks and the movement of goods and peoples in the region—a finding also
supported by archeological data.
The spread of
indica rice was more recent and more complicated; after originating in India's
lower Ganges Valley roughly 4,000 years ago, the researchers traced its
migration from India into China approximately 2,000 years ago.
While the
researchers had thought that rainfall and water would be the most limiting
environmental factor in rice diversity, they found temperature to be the key
factor instead. Their analyses revealed that heat accumulation and temperature
were very strongly associated with the genomic differences between tropical and
temperate japonica rice varieties.
"This
study illustrates the value of multidisciplinary research. Our genomic data
gave us a model for where and when rice spread to different parts of Asia,
archaeology told us when and where rice showed up at various places, and the
environmental and climate modeling gave us the ecological context," said
Purugganan. "Together, this approach allows us to write a first draft of
the story of how rice dispersed across Asia."
Understanding
the spread of rice and the related environmental pressures could also help
scientists develop new varieties that meet future environmental challenges,
such as climate change and drought--which could help address looming food
security issues.
"Armed
with knowledge of the pattern of rice dispersal and environmental factors that
influenced its migration, we can examine the evolutionary adaptations of rice
as it spread to new environments, which could allow us to identify traits and
genes to help future breeding efforts," said Gutaker
PARC vows to increase productivity of rice
By News desk
May 19, 2020
Observer Report
Gujranwala/Islamabad
Dr. Muhammad Azeem Khan, Chairman PARC visited
Gujranwala area along with a team of rice experts, agricultural engineers and
social scientists from PARC/NARC and hold a formal meeting with private sector
entrepreneurs and progressive farmers promoting mechanical sowing of the rice
crop.
He emphasized that mechanical sowing of the crop has clear advantage over other sowing methods in terms of timely sowing of the crop, saving of manual labour, keeping recommended level of plants per unit area, increase in productivity of the crop by at least 10-15% and saving of precious resources for profitable farming.
He expressed that farmers need skill to raise mat nursery and then mechanically transplant it. He suggested rice experts from PARC to demonstrate mechanical sowing of the crop along with direct sowing and conventional flat sowing/ manual transplanting in current Kharif season.
He stressed them to acquire knowledge about best practices of these sowing techniques and document practical knowledge after planting trials of these techniques at multiple sites with different replications about varieties, sowing time and input use etc.
He reiterated that this well help Crop SciencesInstitute, PARC-NARC; National Coordinator Rice, PARC, and Rice Program Kala Shah Kaku to redesign their research plan and efforts to enhance productivity of the rice and wheat crops in the rice-wheat cropping zone in particular and other major crops in general. He stated that this will further help for crop diversification in the country, accelerate import substitution for oil seeds and pulses and result in saving of precious foreign exchange.
He emphasized that mechanical sowing of the crop has clear advantage over other sowing methods in terms of timely sowing of the crop, saving of manual labour, keeping recommended level of plants per unit area, increase in productivity of the crop by at least 10-15% and saving of precious resources for profitable farming.
He expressed that farmers need skill to raise mat nursery and then mechanically transplant it. He suggested rice experts from PARC to demonstrate mechanical sowing of the crop along with direct sowing and conventional flat sowing/ manual transplanting in current Kharif season.
He stressed them to acquire knowledge about best practices of these sowing techniques and document practical knowledge after planting trials of these techniques at multiple sites with different replications about varieties, sowing time and input use etc.
He reiterated that this well help Crop SciencesInstitute, PARC-NARC; National Coordinator Rice, PARC, and Rice Program Kala Shah Kaku to redesign their research plan and efforts to enhance productivity of the rice and wheat crops in the rice-wheat cropping zone in particular and other major crops in general. He stated that this will further help for crop diversification in the country, accelerate import substitution for oil seeds and pulses and result in saving of precious foreign exchange.
To Curb Food Wastage, Pinoy Scientists Harness Plant
Proteins For Milk Production, Sports Nutrition
Clockwise from left: petfoodindustry.com; indiatvnews.com; Burpee
Seed Company; survivalgardener.com
•DOST-funded Pinoy scientists are researching plant proteins to
address nutritional deficiencies and food wastage in the country.
•The team will extract protein concentrates from pressed coconut meal
(copra meal), rice bran, cowpea (paayap), pigeon pea (kadyos), and other
vegetables and agricultural by-products.
•They will begin applying their findings in the fields of sports
nutrition, food production, and dietary supplements.
________________________________________
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has brought numerous lessons and
issues back into the general consciousness of many Filipinos. One of the most
significant reminders, of course, is that hunger remains a major problem in our
country, especially at a time like this. The long lines of people waiting for
food donations and cash assistance from the government (ayuda) emphasizes the
fact that everyone goes hungry, without exception—and unfortunately, it is the
poor who suffer the most.
Knowing all of this makes it even harder to wrap one’s mind around
the reality that we waste so much food. Statistics from the United Nations’
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) show that each year, humans waste
approximately 1.3 billion tons of food—about a third of the food we produce for
our own consumption—with food losses and waste amounting to about USD 310
billion in developing countries. Filipinos waste about 308,000 tons of rice,
our staple food, per year. And in Metro Manila, roughly 2,175 tons of food end
up getting thrown away each day. Considering how an estimated 13 million
Filipinos are forced to live on less than three meals a day, this isn’t just
tragic, it’s unacceptable.
Fortunately, scientists from the Industrial Technology Development
Institute of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST-ITDI) is doing
something about it. Focusing on agricultural waste, food technologist Lourdes
Montevirgen and her team are researching coconut, rice, and vegetable waste in
an effort to harness an “untapped wealth” of sorts: plant proteins, or as
others call it, “green gold.”
From green garbage to green gold
According to India-based firm Markets and Markets Research Private
Ltd., the global functional protein market is projected to reach USD 5.73
billion by the year 2022. Thus, this is an excellent time for Filipino
scientists to establish a foothold in this developing industry, while hitting
two birds with one stone.
With funding from the DOST Grants-In-Aid program, Montevirgen’s
team will extract protein concentrates from pressed coconut meal (copra meal),
rice bran, cowpea (paayap), pigeon pea (kadyos), and other vegetables and
agricultural by-products. These local sources tend to be underutilized, and end
up contributing to the growing food waste problem.
Under the project, the team will develop and modify existing
methods of pretreatment, extraction, and recovery of plant proteins. This will
maximize the productivity, reliability, and efficiency of the overall process.
One of the team’s main areas of focus is tapping into alternative source
materials to reduce our dependency on animal proteins and other commonly used
resources.
Go, grow, and glow
The project has already started, and the team is looking into
applying their findings within the fields of sports nutrition (e.g.
high-protein beverages), food production (e.g. animal meat alternatives, liquid
food stabilizers and emulsifiers, infant formula), and dietary supplements.
The team is confident that alongside growing consumer awareness and
demand worldwide, their research will have a significant impact on the local
functional protein market. Hopefully, with this planned utilization of plant
proteins and alternative nutritional sources, Filipinos will have affordable
options in the near future for avoiding chronic diseases and shifting to a
healthier diet, all while addressing the persistent problem of food wastage.
U.S. Rice Back in Turkish Market
By Sarah Moran
MERCIN, TURKEY -- While Turkey was once a top market for U.S. rice,
bringing in more than 100,000 tons annually, that all changed with the
imposition of a 25 percent retaliatory tariff on all types of U.S. rice in June
2018 (see USA Rice Daily, July 6, 2018).
As a result, U.S. rice exports dropped to an average of 1,500 MT/year
for the past two years. That
dramatically changed this month with a shipment of 25,000 MT of U.S. rough
rice, after a successful Agricultural Trade Promotion-funded reverse trade
mission.
Last fall, USA Rice invited three senior officials from the Turkish
Grain Board (TMO) and the USDA Agricultural Specialist in Turkey to visit U.S.
rice farms, mills, and exporters in California and Arkansas. USA Rice members and TMO officials met
face-to-face to discuss improvements to tender terms and the high-quality
standards of U.S. rice, with the aim to reestablish the once robust Turkish
market.
Following the reverse trade mission, the TMO issued a tender in
January 2020, inviting U.S. rice suppliers to participate for the first time
since 2018. The TMO has been authorized
by the Turkish government to import a total of 100,000 MT of rice at zero duty
via government tenders through December of this year.
"Traders in Turkey are excited about having U.S.-origin rice
back in the Turkish market," said Eszter Somogyi, USA Rice director of
promotions for Europe, Middle East, and Africa.
"As soon as identified U.S. rice is available on the retail
shelves, we plan to conduct promotions differentiating U.S.-origin from other
rice origins that have entered the market recently, emphasizing our high
quality and suitability to Turkish cuisine.
As with all other promotional activities at this point, we will conduct
what is feasible and most efficient given social restrictions caused by the
coronavirus pandemic."
USA Rice Daily
Govt projects -0.38pc GDP growth in FY20
Pakistan
to witness negative GDP growth after 68 years
By
-
May 18, 2020
ISLAMABAD: The
National Accounts Committee (NAC) has estimated the country’s Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) growth rate at -0.38pc for the current financial year (FY20).
During the 102nd NAC meeting, which was chaired
by Planning Secretary Zafar Hasan, it was formed that the provisional GDP
growth for the year 2019-20 has been estimated at -0.38pc, based upon growth
estimates of agricultural, industrial and services sectors.
“The provisional estimates of the GDP and Gross
Fixed Capital Formation (GFCF) for the year 2019-20 were presented on the basis
of latest data of 6-9 months, which were annualized by incorporating the impact
of Covid-19 for the final quarter,” said a statement issued on Monday. “The
smart lockdown policy adopted by the government minimised the impact on
economic growth compared to compete lockdown situation.”
It may
be noted that following the outbreak of coronavirus in the country, the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, finance ministry and the State
Bank of Pakistan had predicted up to -1.5pc economic growth for the current
fiscal year. The NAC was informed that the agriculture sector grew by 2.67pc; growth of important crops during this year was 2.90pc. This increase was due to an uptick in the production of wheat, rice and maize at 2.45pc, 2.89pc and 6.01pc, respectively. However, cotton, and sugarcane crops witnessed a negative growth of 6.92pc and 0.44pc, respectively.
Other crops (onion, potato, vegetables etc.) showed a positive growth of 4.57pc mainly due to an increase in the production of pulses, oil seeds and vegetables.
Similarly, the livestock sector registered a growth of 2.58pc owing to a lower in demand for dairy and poultry post coronavirus. The sector was earlier projected to register record gains.
Forestry grew 2.29pc due to an increase in the production of timber.
Meanwhile, the country’s industrial sector witnessed a negative growth of 2.64pc mainly because of the imposition of corona-related lockdown.
The value added mining and quarrying sector declined by 8.82pc, while large scale manufacturing (LSM) sector, which is driven primarily by QIM data (from July 2019 to March 2020), showed a decline of 7.78pc. Major decline was observed in textile (-2.57pc), food, beverage & tobacco (-2.33pc), coke & petroleum products (-17.46pc), pharmaceuticals (-5.38pc), chemicals (-2.30pc), automobiles (-36.5pc), iron & steel products (-7.96pc), electronics (-13.54pc), engineering products (-7.05pc), and wood products (-22.11pc). On the other hand, positive growth in LSM was observed in fertilizer (5.81pc), leather products (4.96pc), rubber products (4.31pc) and paper & board (4.23pc).
Electricity and gas sub sector grew by 17.70pc mainly due to higher subsidies and better value addition in WAPDA companies, whereas construction activity increased by 8.06pc mainly due to an increase in general government expenditure.
The services sector, which has remained Pakistan’s major growth driver for years, witnessed a rare contraction of 0.59pc in the provisional estimates, while the wholesale and retail trade sector contracted by 3.42pc, and transport, storage and communication sector saw a negative growth of 7.13pc.
Finance and insurance sector showed a modest increase of 0.79pc. The remaining components of services i.e. housing, general government and other private services witnessed a positive growth of 4.02pc, 3.92pc and 5.39pc, respectively.
According to the planning ministry, GDP at current market prices has been computed and stands at Rs41,727 billion for 2019-20. This shows a growth of 9.9pc over Rs37,972 billion for 2018-19.
The per capita income for 2019-20 was calculated at Rs214,539 for 2019-20, showing a growth of 8.3pc over Rs198,028 during 2018-19.
It is pertinent to mention that the country would witness a negative growth in its economy the first time since 1951 largely due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The pandemic outbreak has played a havoc with world markets, with the IMF estimating the world economy to contract by 3pc this year – the most severe downturn since the Great Depression in the 1930s. The situation could get much worse if the pandemic lingers into the second half of the year or resurges.
Before the spread of Covid-19 across Pakistan,
the finance ministry and the IMF had projected 2.4pc GDP growth in the current
fiscal year.
Global cold spell changed rice forever
May 18th, 2020
Posted by Rachel
Harrison-NYU
A major global
cooling event 4,200 years ago may have led to the evolution of new rice
varieties and the spread of rice into both northern and southern Asia,
researchers report.
The study in Nature Plants
reconstructs the history of rice and trace its migration throughout Asia.
Rice is one of
the most important crops worldwide, a staple for more than half of the global
population. It was first cultivated 9,000 years ago in the Yangtze Valley in
China and later spread across East, Southeast, and South Asia, followed by the
Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the Americas.
In the process,
rice evolved and adapted to different environments, but little is known about
the routes, timing, and environmental forces involved in this spread.
In their study,
the researchers reconstructed the historical movement of rice across Asia using
whole-genome sequences of more than 1,400 varieties of rice—including varieties
of japonica and indica, two main subspecies of Asian rice—coupled with
geography, archaeology, and historical climate data.
Climate change
and rice’s evolution
For the first
4,000 years of its history, farming rice was largely confined to China, and
japonica was the subspecies people there grew. Then, a global cooling event
4,200 years ago—also known as the 4.2k event, which is thought to have had
widespread consequences, including the collapse of civilizations from
Mesopotamia to China—coincided with japonica rice diversifying into temperate
and tropical varieties.
The newly evolved temperate varieties spread in northern China, Korea, and
Japan, while the tropical varieties and spread to Southeast Asia.
“This abrupt
climate change forced plants, including crops, to adapt,” says lead author
Rafal M. Gutaker, a postdoctoral associate at the New York University’s Center
for Genomics and Systems Biology.
“Our genomic
data, as well as paleoclimate modeling by our collaborators, show that the
cooling event occurred at the same time as the rise of temperate japonica,
which grows in milder regions. This cooling event also may have led to the
migration of rice agriculture
and farmer communities into Southeast Asia.”
“These findings
were then backed up by data from archaeological rice remains excavated in Asia,
which also showed that after the 4.2k event, tropical rice migrated south while
rice also adapted to northern latitudes as temperate varieties,” says Michael
D. Purugganan, a professor of biology who led the study.
After the
global cooling event, tropical japonica rice continued to diversify. It reached
islands in Southeast Asia about 2,500 years ago, likely due to extensive trade
networks and the movement of goods and peoples in the region—a finding also
supported by archeological data.
The spread of
indica rice was more recent and more complicated; after originating in India’s
lower Ganges Valley roughly 4,000 years ago, the researchers traced its migration
from India into China approximately 2,000 years ago.
‘A first draft’
of the story
While the
researchers had thought that rainfall and water would be the most limiting
environmental factor in rice diversity, they found temperature to be the key
factor instead. Their analyses revealed that heat accumulation and temperature
were very strongly associated with the genomic differences between tropical and
temperate japonica rice varieties.
“Our genomic data
gave us a model for where and when rice spread to different parts of Asia,
archaeology told us when and where rice showed up at various places, and the
environmental and climate modeling gave us the ecological context,” says
Purugganan.
“Together, this
approach allows us to write a first draft of the story of how rice dispersed
across Asia.”
Understanding
the spread of rice and the related environmental pressures could also help
scientists develop new varieties that meet future environmental challenges,
such as climate change and drought—which could help address looming food
security issues.
“Armed with
knowledge of the pattern of rice dispersal and environmental factors that
influenced its migration, we can examine the evolutionary adaptations of rice
as it spread to new environments, which could allow us to identify traits and
genes to help future breeding efforts,” says Gutaker.
Additional
researchers from NYU; Penn State; Universidade Nova de Lisboa in Portugal; the
Crow Canyon Archaeological Center; Carnegie Mellon University; the University
of Manitoba; University College London; North-West University in China;
University College Dublin; and the University of California. San Diego.
Support for the
research came from the Zegar Family Foundation and the National Science
Foundation Plant Genome Research Program.
Pakistan
Market Monitor Report - May 2020
Source
·
WFP
Posted
18 May 2020
Originally
published
18 May 2020
Attachments
HIGHLIGHTS
• In April 2020, the
average retail prices of wheat and wheat flour decreased by 3.8% and 0.04%,
respectively, from March 2020; the price of rice Irri-6 slightly increased by
3.9% while rice Basmati negligibly increased by 0.1% in April 2020 when
compared to the previous month;
• Headline inflation based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) decreased in
April 2020 by 0.84% over March 2020 and increased by 8.53% over April 2019;
• The prices of staple cereals and non-cereal food commodities in April
2020 experienced negligible to slight fluctuations, except for pulses (Masoor,
Moong, and Mash) which experienced significant price increases, when compared
to the previous month’s prices;
• In April 2020, the average ToT negligibly increased by 0.04% from the
previous month;
• In May 2020, the total global wheat production for 2020/21 is projected
at 768.49 million MT, indicating an increase of 4.03 million MT compared to the
projection made in April 2020.
Food exporters cry for clarity about ban
Published: May 18, 2020
PHOTO:
Reuters
KARACHI: The
Covid-19 pandemic has started taking its toll on Pakistan’s exports.
Merchandise exports in April this year nosedived to $957 million from $2.09
billion in April last year.
The easing of lockdown restrictions for
export-oriented industries plus concessional finance packages and massive
interest rate cuts may help check this free fall in export earnings from May
onwards. But that is just like seeing the half glass full. Nothing is certain
in these uncertain times.
Rice exporters say export shipments remained
very low in April and only those exporters were able to ship their orders that
had got their April-bound consignments cleared by the Customs authorities in
March.
They say in April the movement of export
containers from mills and warehouses across the country to Karachi Port was
badly affected by the lockdown in the country. So, even those exporters who had
firm orders from some Asian and African countries could not arrange shipments.
Lockdowns in the importing countries and
suspension of shipping services made matters worse.
At the beginning of May, when the federal
government announced a ban on the export of food items, it created confusion
among rice exporters and they met Commerce Adviser Abdul Razak Dawood for its
removal.
The adviser clarified that rice was not in the
list of food items whose exports were banned. But even after his clarification,
Customs and Karachi Port authorities were not entertaining rice exports on the
plea that they had not received any notification – not till May 5 when this
writer checked facts. Hopefully, such a notification will be in place by the
time this piece is published.
Food exports constitute more than one-fourth of
Pakistan’s total merchandise exports. Banning food exports makes sense at a
time when ensuring food security becomes more important.
Even in normal circumstances, food security is
important because despite the fact that Pakistan is a food-surplus country, the
National Nutritional Survey 2018 revealed that almost 40% of the population
faces food insecurity.
What does not make sense, though, is the fact
that the government has apparently not issued a comprehensive list of food
items whose export it has banned.
The export of sugar, wheat, onion, tomatoes and
potatoes was banned even before the government announced that it would shutter
businesses and advised people to stay at home in late March. Those exports
remain banned to date and food exporters have no issue with that.
However, they are running from pillar to post
to learn if there are any other exemptions – like rice – from the recently
imposed ban on food exports. The government must remove the confusion, more so
because a big 54% decline in export earnings in April leaves no room for policy
confusion that may cause a further decline in such earnings.
Meanwhile, the federal and provincial
governments must also work hard to implement the recently promulgated ordinance
on smuggling and hoarding. Ensuring enough supplies of edible items during an
emergency is not simply possible even after banning exports if hoarders and
smugglers continue to operate. Reports of disappearance of tens of thousands of
wheat bags in Sindh hit headlines just weeks ago.
Main edible export items of Pakistan are rice,
sugar, wheat, kinnows, mangoes, livestock meat, chicken meat, powdered milk,
vegetables, seafood, ice cream, bakery items, food spices and processed food
items.
Another hurdle
While lamenting lack of clarity about the items
exempted from the recently imposed ban on food exports, All Pakistan Fruits and
Vegetable Exporters, Importers and Merchants Association (PFVA) Patron-in-Chief
Waheed Ahmed brought forth another caveat.
From initial plucking and sorting to final
packaging and loading of mangoes, growers require skilled labour that travel
from southern Punjab to Sindh. Owing to the lockdown, this movement of labour
has been constrained. This means exporters will not get supplies of mangoes for
shipments on time.
Sindh and Punjab governments must sort out this
issue. Sindh has a significant share of almost 29% in the total 180,000 tons of
mango production. If this situation continues for a few more weeks, then it
will cause an acute shortage of Pakistani mangoes in domestic and export
markets.
Like other food exporters, former Pakistan
Vanaspati Manufacturers Association (PVMA) chairman Sheikh Amjad Rashid also
appeared worried over the government’s decision to ban export of edible items.
“We have not been informed about this decision
in writing,” he said, when reached over phone for comments. But he said exports
of edible oil and ghee will not be affected much. The reason is that exports of
these items stand next to nothing.
“We used to export finished products to
Afghanistan but repeated closure of borders and imposition of additional taxes
have brought down exports of edible oil and ghee to Kabul to negligible
levels.”
Rashid and several other food exporters think
that the Ministry of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives, Ministry of
National Food Security and Research and provincial governments need greater
collaboration for designing a flawless food export policy and for implementing
it in a manner that exporters do not lose whatever goodwill they are left with
in international markets.
The writer is a mechanical engineer and is
doing masters
Published in The Express Tribune, May 18th,
2020.
Meeting agriculturists’ requirements
May 18, 2020
THE fate of Pakistan’s agriculture this year
hinges chiefly on how successful it becomes in the ongoing fight against
locusts. The breeding and spread of locusts across agricultural fields have
emerged as a serious challenge.
Sindh has “reservations” about the extent of
federal cooperation it has so far received. But generally, the fight against
locusts is being fought in high spirit with full support from global
organisations and friendly countries like China and Turkey, according to a
recent Dawn report.
Amidst the ongoing war against Covid-19, food
security is utmost important. And, food security cannot be ensured without
keeping the agriculture sector in order and meeting all requirements of
agriculturists.
One aspect of this requirement is of the
availability of inputs. The local output and the marketing of some inputs like
fertilisers remain almost unaffected amidst Covid-19. But imports of certified
seeds, pesticides/insecticides and even agricultural machinery have reportedly
been hit owing to the disruption in international trade.
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Wheat production for this year has already
fallen short of target to a five-year average of 25.38 million tonnes against
the target of 27.03m tonnes, according to the latest Food and Agriculture
Organisation (FAO) report.
The Federal Committee on Agriculture (FCA) was
scheduled to meet at the end of March. But it has not met so far owing to a
delay in data collection on part of the provinces amidst Covid-19 lockdowns.
The nation will know about the exact production of wheat as well as carryover
stocks — only after the FCA meeting. The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) says
milled rice production this year has remained at the last year’s level of 7.2m
tonnes. This is enough to feed the local population of 220m people and set
aside a part of production for exports.
The expected shortfall in the output may
trigger another wheat flour crisis
The expected shortfall in the wheat output may
trigger another wheat flour crisis and adequate rice production can help earn precious
foreign exchange. Media reports suggest Pakistan already exported more rice to
the Gulf countries in April, taking advantage of stricter lockdowns in India
that affected Indian rice exports to that region. Pakistan relies almost
entirely on local wheat and paddy seeds. So in the future, any disruption in
the supplies of imported seeds isn’t going to affect these two staple food
crops. (A small quantity of Chinese paddy seeds and Australian wheat seeds are
grown locally under bilateral technical cooperation).
The case of maize is different. The country
does rely on imported seeds in addition to locally available seeds. Corn seeds
of high-yield varieties are imported in sizable quantities from the United
States, Mexico, Ukraine and Argentina. Growers say such imports have come to a
halt fearing that this may affect the winter maize crop. For the past few
years, Pakistan’s maize output has been on the rise owing to the availability
of locally developed better seed varieties as well as imported seeds.
In the last cropping year, the maize output was
in excess of 6.3m tonnes, up from 5.9m tonnes a year ago. Though maize is
mostly used for manufacturing animal and poultry feed, corn flour becomes the
most natural alternative of wheat flour particularly in Punjab and Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa in case of wheat shortages.
Smaller imports of certified seeds of fodder
crops, maize and vegetables are also affecting these crops. But this is not a
major problem since the local production of seeds of major food items is adequate.
Within the country, about 40-50 leading companies, out of an estimated 400-500,
produce certified seeds of food crops. In recent years, their production has
been on the rise. Between July 2019 and January 2020, Pakistan spent about
$700m on imports of certified seeds of crops (including oil seeds), down from
$800m in the same period of 2018-19, SBP statistics reveal.
Equipping farmers with most modern agricultural
machinery and technology is a must because pre- and post-harvest losses are
very high, particularly in case of vegetables, fruits, pulses and other
perishable crops. Crop losses owing to a lack of storage facilities are common
in case of major food crops i.e. wheat, rice and maize.
Facilitating machinery and technology imports
should, therefore, be part of the second round of the incentive package for
farmers under consideration. Pakistan spends very little on imports of
agricultural machinery and equipment. In the first nine months of this fiscal
year, this spending fell below $75m from a little more than $100m a year ago. A
slashing of interest rates on agricultural loans in general and on development
agricultural loans in particular is on the cards. That may help increase the
purchase of imported and locally assembled agricultural machinery and
equipment.
The government is also incentivising the use of
tractor through some subsidy on sales tax. But so far no move has been made to
facilitate the construction of steel silos on an emergency basis to contain
crop losses and increase the shelf life of food grains. Similarly, no specific
incentives are being offered for promoting the tunnel farming of vegetables and
fruits and not much has been done to improve the conditions of fisheries.
Subsidised loans for the manufacturing of modern fishing boats and fish-hauling
equipment can promote fish exports.
Amidst a greater concern for ensuring food
security, rice, seafood and meat products remain the only three major
categories of food exports that the government can now rely on.
Disruptions in shipping services have resulted
in the lower supplies of imported fertilisers and insecticides/pesticides in
February-April, growers say. Crops have not been affected much owing to the
scant supplies of fertilisers though as local supplies have remained adequate.
But the case of insecticides/pesticides is
different. Imported raw materials are used even in locally manufactured
insecticides/pesticides and their lower imports plus a decline in the volumes
of imported finished products are bound to affect crop management. In
July-March, Pakistan’s imports of foreign fertilisers fell to 92,000 tonnes
from 134,000 tonnes a year ago. And the imports of insecticides/pesticides
contracted to just $12m from $16m, data released by the Pakistan Bureau of
Statistics shows.--MA
Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance
Weekly, May 18th , 2020
Food security: Pakistan readies for second battle against crop-devouring locusts
19 May 2020
ZOFEEN T EBRAHIM
Karachi, Pakistan
Thomson Reuters Foundation
Thomson Reuters Foundation
To many farmers in south-east Pakistan, an
impending locust attack when summer crops of cotton, sugarcane and rice are
being sown, and fruit and vegetables are ready to be picked is a much bigger
problem than the coronavirus pandemic.
"If the crops are eaten up by the locusts,
we will have a dire food security issue on our hands," said Zahid Bhurgri,
a farmer from Mirpur Khas district in Sindh province.
"The price of flour and vegetables will
sky-rocket," making staple foods hard for some to afford, added Bhurgri,
who is also general secretary of the Sindh Chamber of Agriculture.
Locusts
eat pearl millet in Bhadi, a village in Umerkot-Sindh, Pakistan, on 7th
November, 2019. PICTURE: Thomson Reuters Foundation/Manoj Genani
The United Nations' Food and Agriculture
Organization estimates losses to agriculture from locusts this year could be as
high as PKR 353 billion ($US2.2 billion) for winter crops like wheat and
potatoes and about PKR 464 billion for summer crops.
A May update from the FAO warned it would
be "imperative" to contain and control the desert locust infestation
in the midst of the additional impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on health,
livelihoods, food security and nutrition for Pakistan's most poor and
vulnerable communities.
Last year, Pakistan suffered its worst attack of locusts since 1993, for which the country was largely unprepared.
Last year, Pakistan suffered its worst attack
of locusts since 1993, for which the country was largely unprepared.
Farmers now have little confidence the
government will help them fight a new wave of voracious insects threatening their
harvests – though officials said extensive measures were being taken.
"Neither the central, nor the provincial
government is doing anything about it," said Bhurgri, who grows
vegetables, red chillies, cotton and sugarcane on about 600 acres of land.
The locusts arrived in Pakistan from Iran in
June 2019, devouring cotton, wheat and maize, among other crops.
The invasion was initially expected to subside
by mid-November. But it has persisted due to favourable weather conditions for
continued locust breeding, linked to global warming, according to FAO's
Pakistan office.
"Good vegetation due to plentiful rain and
a sandy soil provided a perfect setting for the insects to multiply," said
Muhammad Tariq Khan, technical director at the Department of Plant Protection
in the Ministry of National Food Security and Research.
In a recent letter to Prime Minister Imran
Khan, Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah warned of a "massive locust
attack" expected on local farmland when swarms from Iran reach his
province in mid-May, which could "prove more harmful" than last
year's invasion.
A girl
with her family drums cans to drive away locusts from a millet crop in the
village of Ramsar in Umerkot, Sindh, Pakistan, on 6th October, 2019. PICTURE:
Thomson Reuters Foundation/Manoj Genani
With little time to waste, farmer Bhurgri
decided to take matters into his own hands and "fight the locusts
myself".
Using a power sprayer fixed on a tractor, he
plans to douse them with pesticides while they rest on trees at night, and get
his farmhands to clang pots and pans during the day to drive the pests from his
land.
But there are many small-scale farmers who lack
the means to deal with the locusts on their own, he added.
Some do not feel confident enough to invest in
their crop this year or are cutting costs by not using the required amount of
fertiliser, he noted.
Warmer seas have led to more cyclones in the Indian Ocean, causing heavy rainfall along the Arabian Peninsula and in the Horn of Africa, producing the perfect environment for breeding.
Mubarik Ahmed, national coordinator for locust
control at FAO's office in Karachi, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that
Pakistan had been taken by surprise last year when locusts wreaked havoc in all
its four provinces.
Unprecedented rains that led to vegetation
cover in Sindh's Tharparkar desert had enabled the locusts to breed and then
attack crop areas, he said.
The country was "relatively better
prepared" to meet the challenge this year, he added. But the situation
could get worse with huge swarms expected to arrive in the coming two to three
months from Iran, Oman and the Horn of Africa.
Locust swarms are not new in East Africa,
the Middle East and South Asia. But climate scientists say erratic weather
linked to climate change has created ideal conditions for the insects to surge
in numbers not seen in a quarter of a century.
Warmer seas have led to more cyclones in the
Indian Ocean, causing heavy rainfall along the Arabian Peninsula and in the
Horn of Africa, producing the perfect environment for breeding.
Experts say insect populations have found new
homes across Pakistan and are now laying eggs in nearly 40 per cent of its
territory, including Sindh but mainly in the south-west province of
Balochistan.
Locusts
cover a tree in Bhadi, a village in Umerkot-Sindh, Pakistan, on 7th November,
2019. PICTURE: Thomson Reuters Foundation/Manoj Genan
FAO locust forecaster Keith Cressman said
locusts that had unusually stayed in parts of Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and
the Indus Valley during the winter would now move southeast to their summer
breeding areas in the Cholistan and Tharparkar deserts from May to July.
Swarms breeding in Pakistan's deserts will
likely be joined by others from southern Iran in a few weeks, with more likely
to arrive from the Horn of Africa around July, experts predict.
The swarms are expected to be much larger than
in 2019, because their numbers increase on average 20-fold with each
generation. They travel in swarms of between 30 million to 50 million insects,
covering a distance of 150 kilometres and devouring 200 tonnes of crops per
day.
Khan of the Department of Plant Protection, who
is the state's focal point for locust control, said the government had been
preparing for the next wave of locusts since last year.
Khan said Pakistan now had "a fairly foolproof plan", including aircraft and ground vehicles to spray the insects, pesticides and more than 1,000 trained teams of four people that can be deployed at short notice across the country.
In January, the ministry shared a national action plan for surveillance and control of
the desert locusts with the Prime Minister, who declared the locust attacks a national
emergency in February.
That helped drive things forward with funding,
surveillance and control operations, coordinated with provincial agriculture
departments, the National Disaster Management Authority, the FAO and the army,
said Khan.
In addition, officials from the FAO,
Afghanistan, India, Iran and Pakistan meet each week to discuss and plan for
the regional situation, he added.
Khan said Pakistan now had "a fairly
foolproof plan", including aircraft and ground vehicles to spray the
insects, pesticides and more than 1,000 trained teams of four people that can
be deployed at short notice across the country.
Timely action since February in the remote
desert of Balochistan, with support from the army, had so far helped tame the
threat, he added.
Surveys detected the locusts' breeding ground
and the hoppers – or young locusts – have been sprayed regularly to kill them
before they become adults, he said.
Locusts
eat watermelon plants in a desert areas of Umerkot, in Pakistan's Sindh
province, on 7th November, 2019. PICTURE: Thomson Reuters Foundation/Manoj
Genani
If control operations go according to plan, he
remains hopeful Pakistan will not suffer the high levels of infestation now
being experienced in the Horn of Africa.
"One of the reasons I say this with such
confidence is that I know what their level of preparation is and what is ours
right now," he added.
Relief efforts continue amid lockdown in Karachi
By Aamir Khan
Published: May 18, 2020
PHOTO:
FILE
KARACHI: As the
coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing lockdown continue to wreak havoc in the
country, depriving many of their livelihoods and leaving scores out of
business, Karachi’s philanthropists have stepped forward to help those worst
hit in these troubling times.
In fact, besides the city’s philanthropists,
various religious, political and social welfare organisations, too, have been
partaking in relief activities, regularly distributing rations among the
destitute.
“The scope of ration distribution has been
expanded by a significant degree in Ramazan, so that poor families too are able
observe the month with as few worries as possible and celebrate Eid in the same
way as more privileged people,” Imranul Haq, a volunteer from a social welfare
organization, told The Express Tribune.
“Individuals who previously preferred to donate
money to charity and welfare organisations are also now seen increasingly
engaged in funding ration distribution drives and giving money for distributing
Eid gifts among the poor,” he claimed.
In Karachi in particular, ration distribution
drives have gained momentum in Kharadar, Mithadar, Saddar, Ranchhor Line,
Garden, PIB Colony, Defence Housing Authority (DHA) , Clifton, Gulshan-e-Iqbal,
Nazimabad, North Karachi, Landhi, Korangi, Malir and old city areas.
According to Haji Taslim, a volunteer at a
ration distribution drive in Liaquatabad, citizens who have initiated such
campaigns on their own get ration bags packed under their supervision, and then
either distribute them themselves or hand them over to a non-profit
organisation for disbursement.
According to records provided by Haq, ration
bags worth between Rs7,000 and Rs15,000 are being distributed among the poor in
Karachi on a regular basis, while most bags being distributed fall in the range
of Rs3,000 to Rs5,000. These bags contain flour, sugar, rice, peanuts, lentils,
gram flour, ghee, oil and spices, among other items, in enough quantities to
meet a family’s needs for 15 days.
As many as 550,000 such ration bags have been
distributed by the Saylani Welfare Trust since the commencement of lockdown
relief efforts, said trust’s spokersperson Raees Fatta. “The organisation aims
to distribute millions of more ration bags and thousands of Eid gifts by the
end of Ramazan,” he added.
Similarly, Ahmad Raza Tayyab, the trustee of
Mustafa Welfare Trust, said that the organisation had distributed ration among
over 10,000 families to date, as well as rice among 80,000 more.
Alkhidmat Foundation director community
services Qazi Syed Sadruddin said that his welfare organisation had provide
rations to 500,000 households since the lockdown, and Ramazan Chippa of the
Chippa Welfare Organisation said that they had distributed rations among
300,000 families.
According to Faisal Edhi, chief of the Edhi
Foundation, his organisation had provided rations to 200,000 families so far,
while Alamgir Welfare Trust joint secretary Shakeel Dehlvi stated that they had
distributed rations among over 100,000 families.
Zafar Abbas of the Jafaria Disaster Management
Cell shared that they had distributed hundreds of thousands of ration bags
among the needy and aimed to achieve the target of disbursing at least two
million bags. Besides, more than 200,000 bags and Eid gift have been
distributed by the Khidmat-e-Khalq Foundation, said Muttahida Qaumi
Movement-Pakistan spokesperson Aminul Haq.
According to Mahmood Attari of Dawat-e-Islami,
the organisation has distributed over 400,000 bags thus far and aims to help at
least 2.6 million families.
Furthermore, 200,000 bags have been distributed
by the Pak Sarzameen Party and more than 100,000 families have received
assistance from the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf till now.
Pakistan Public Forum chairperson Tahir Hussain Syed said that his organisation had distributed rations among 2,000 families, and Mubashir Raza of the Anjuman-e-Zia-e-Taiba told The Express Tribune that they had provided aid to 500 families.
Pakistan Public Forum chairperson Tahir Hussain Syed said that his organisation had distributed rations among 2,000 families, and Mubashir Raza of the Anjuman-e-Zia-e-Taiba told The Express Tribune that they had provided aid to 500 families.
Sunni Tehreek spokesperson Faheem qadri said
that the party had distributed ration among 6,000 families and, according to
Global Foundation head Ahmed Qadri, the organisation has distributed 7,000
ration bags thus far.
Moreover, as many as 500,000 families have
received aid from the Pakistan People’s Party’s Sindh chapter.
Indonesian officials vow to ensure sufficient food supply for Aidilfitri amid COVID-19
·
Monday, 18 May 2020
People
wearing face masks as protection amid the Covid-19 outbreak at a market in
Jakarta, Indonesia, on Monday (May 18). ndonesian officials have vowed to
ensure sufficient food supply for people countrywide as the Hari Raya
Aidilfitri celebrations are nearing amid the outbreak. - AP
JAKARTA: Indonesian officials have vowed to ensure sufficient food
supply for people countrywide as the Hari Raya Aidilfitri celebrations are
nearing amid the Covid-19 outbreak and the ongoing dry season.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo has asked his relevant ministers and state institutions to take necessary measures in anticipation of possible food shortage amid the current Covid-19 pandemic.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo has asked his relevant ministers and state institutions to take necessary measures in anticipation of possible food shortage amid the current Covid-19 pandemic.
The country's Agriculture Minister Syahrul Yasin Limpo said his
ministry is preparing a program to take advantage of 400,000 hectares of peat
land, and 200,000 hectares of dried land for agricultural use in face of
droughts.
According to the country's Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency, Indonesia has entered dry season since April.
According to the country's Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency, Indonesia has entered dry season since April.
"We would also invite state-owned enterprises to cultivate
their unused plots of land for food crops including corn and paddy in response
to the warning of the coming droughts," he said.
He noted that his ministry would also meet the president's instruction to use some plots of forest areas for farm land in a bid to handle possible food shortage in Indonesia.
In support of Limpo's efforts, Minister for Village Affairs, Less-developed Areas and Transmigration Abdul Halim Iskandar said that his ministry has prepared 1.8 million hectares of land to help maintain the food resilience in the post-Covid-19 pandemic.
The agricultural land was expected to be used for a rice field intensification program to accelerate the harvest time and improve the quality of rice, the minister said at a recent virtual press conference in Jakarta.
According to the minister, of the 1.8 million hectares of land, 500,000 hectares have been used for production activities to meet food demand of 16 million people annually in the transmigration areas.
The effort to increase the agricultural productivity is considerably important in anticipation of possible food crisis in the post-COVID-19 pandemic, he said, adding that due to the pandemic, other countries have also been suffering hardships.
The minister likewise said the COVID-19 outbreak has made rice exporters difficult to send their products abroad as they have to consider their own needs.
Meanwhile, Indonesian National Logistics Agency's Budi Waseso said that his agency is expected to have rice reserves totalling 1.8 million tons after procuring the staple from farmers following their grand harvests until June this year.
"Until June, our rice will amount to 1.8 million tons. So the people should not worry about rice," Waseso told a hearing with legislators recently. - Xinhua/Asian News Network
He noted that his ministry would also meet the president's instruction to use some plots of forest areas for farm land in a bid to handle possible food shortage in Indonesia.
In support of Limpo's efforts, Minister for Village Affairs, Less-developed Areas and Transmigration Abdul Halim Iskandar said that his ministry has prepared 1.8 million hectares of land to help maintain the food resilience in the post-Covid-19 pandemic.
The agricultural land was expected to be used for a rice field intensification program to accelerate the harvest time and improve the quality of rice, the minister said at a recent virtual press conference in Jakarta.
According to the minister, of the 1.8 million hectares of land, 500,000 hectares have been used for production activities to meet food demand of 16 million people annually in the transmigration areas.
The effort to increase the agricultural productivity is considerably important in anticipation of possible food crisis in the post-COVID-19 pandemic, he said, adding that due to the pandemic, other countries have also been suffering hardships.
The minister likewise said the COVID-19 outbreak has made rice exporters difficult to send their products abroad as they have to consider their own needs.
Meanwhile, Indonesian National Logistics Agency's Budi Waseso said that his agency is expected to have rice reserves totalling 1.8 million tons after procuring the staple from farmers following their grand harvests until June this year.
"Until June, our rice will amount to 1.8 million tons. So the people should not worry about rice," Waseso told a hearing with legislators recently. - Xinhua/Asian News Network
ZF, Belgrave Investment, Odisha mining baron pick up stakes in Suzlon
M
Ramesh Chennai | Updated on May 18, 2020 Published on May 18, 2020
Tulsi Tanti,
Chairman and Managing Director of Suzlon Energy - REUTERS
German gearbox
manufacturer ZF, foreign portfolio investor (FPI) Belgrave Investment Fund and
Odisha mining baroness Indrani Patnaik are among those who have picked up small
stakes in Suzlon Energy, helping the company bring in fresh equity of ₹363.50 crore,
required by the lenders as part of a debt restructuring plan.
The e-voting
for the resolutions for allotting shares and compulsorily convertible
debentures (CCDs) to investors as well as raising the authorised capital of the
company and conversion of lenders’ debt into equity, ended today.
The equity
infusion of ₹363.50 crore appears to be practically
crowd-funded, with over a hundred associates of Suzlon (customers, vendors,
service providers) chipping in with funds.
Promoter Tulsi
Tanti, who is also the Chairman and Managing Director of Suzlon Energy, through
Tanti Holdings Pvt Ltd, is bringing in ₹100 crore. But the list of investors —
including the family and associates of the other promoter, Dilip Shanghvi of
Sun Pharma — is 165-entry long. Equity shares are to be allotted to these
persons and entities at a price of ₹2.45 a share of face value of ₹2.
Notable
investors
The notable
investors include ZF, which sells gearboxes to Suzlon (and had bought
Suzlon-owned gearbox manufacturing company Hansen, in 2011). It has now put in ₹12 crore.
Belgrave
Investment Fund, which has stakes in Electrosteel Castings, its group company
Srikalahasthi Pipes, and Lakshmi Vilas Bank, has put ₹13.5 crore into
Suzlon. A company called Amrik Singh & Sons Crane Services Pvt Ltd, which
offers cranes on hire for erecting wind turbines, has invested ₹25 crore.
Several
customers of Suzlon have chipped in, too. Indrani Patnaik, whose Patnaik
Minerals Pvt Ltd is an owner of wind power, has pumped in ₹20 crore, guar gum
producer Rajasthan Gum Pvt Ltd ₹10 crore, Giriraj Enterprises, which sells air
coolers ₹15 crore. Among listed companies, basmati rice
exporter KRBL Ltd and power transmission infrastructure builder Techno
Electric, both of whom own wind power assets, have put in ₹5 crore each.
Shanghvi’s
son-in-law and companies owned by him and his entities are picking up equity
shares for ₹15 crore and CCDs for another ₹15 crore.
The ₹363.50 crore of
equity infusion and another ₹50 crore of funds through the issue of CCDs
were among the conditions set by the lenders before they agreed to restructure
the company’s debt. As on December 31, 2019, Suzlon Energy had ₹11,463 crore of
rupee debt on its books.
Promoters’
(Tanti and ‘bodies corporate’ owned by him) holdings are set to fall from 19.79
per cent to 17.17 per cent after the allotment of shares, though the promoters
would own 147 crore shares, 40 more than before the allotment. Shanghvi and his
associates, however, come under ‘non-promoters’.
‘Suzlon will be
back’
Speaking to BusinessLine
on Saturday, Tanti said Suzlon will be “back in the market” with an order book
that will keep it busy for the next 18 months. A corporate presentation of the
company dated February 2020 said Suzlon has orders for 857 MW worth ₹4,399 crore.
Tanti said
Suzlon had begun working with both customers and vendors and would get active
as soon as the lockdown ends.
Tanti, who is
also the Chairman of the Indian Wind Turbine Manufacturers Association, noted
that a number of favourable developments put the industry on a solid
foundation. He pointed out that the cap on tariffs has been removed, easing the
pressure on prices to turbine manufacturers. The proposed ₹90,000-crore
liquidity injection into electricity distribution companies would enable them
to pay their dues to energy companies, which in turn would give room to the
energy companies to pay the turbine manufacturers and place more orders, he
observed.
He was also
confident that the government would waive inter-State transmission charges (₹1.5 a kWhr),
paving the way for energy companies to sell to customers directly. (Such ‘open
access’ sales have always been more remunerative.) Furthermore, the government
has approved viability gap funding for Central public sector companies to
install up to 12 GW of wind power plants.
However, due to
the pandemic, Tanti expects wind installations of only 2 GW in FY 21, against
1,580 MW in FY20. The market would improve to 3-4 GW next year, but will soar
to bigger numbers from the year after next, he said.
Non-basmati exporters see opportunity amid Covid-19 as
crops fail elsewhere
They
are looking to tap exports in Africa, South East Asia as paddy crop in Tahiland
and Vietnam fails, other exporting nations maintain buffer stocks
|
Lucknow Last Updated at May 20, 2020 02:33 IST
TREA is
targetting to push non-basmati rice exports to Rs 40,000 crore by 2022.
Indian non-basmati rice
players have spotted export opportunities amid the unfolding Covid-19 crisis
across the globe, especially in Southeast Asian and African nations.
The failure of non-basmati paddy
crop in Vietnam and Thailand, coupled with major producing nations' attempt to
buffer stocks to deal with the uncertain Covid-19 situation, has presented a
lucrative playground for Indian exporters.
“Given all these factors and the fact that India currently
has three times the rice buffer stock, we have a big opportunity to tap export
destinations,” said Rajiv Kumar, executive director, The Rice Exporters
Association (TREA). He said the central government should give incentives to
exporters, so that their benefits could accrue to domestic players.
“Last year, non-basmati rice
exports had come down by nearly 25 per cent, resulting in a huge stockpile. The
current year looks great for exporters,” he said, adding that export contracts
have been signed with Indonesia, Malaysia, etc. Similar opportunities exist in
African nations, including Nigeria.
A major
debilitating factor is a ban on paddy movement in Andhra Pradesh and this is
impeding exports from Kakinada port, which accounts for 35-40 per cent of
annual rice shipments. “While there are other logistical issues related to the
transportation of commodities owing to the lockdown, the ban on the free
movement of paddy is a big negative since Kakinada is the anchorage port for
rice consignments,” he informed.
Normally, paddy
from the neighbouring states is brought for milling in Andhra Pradesh and subsequently
taken to ports for export.
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While Indian
non-basmati rice exports are valued at nearly Rs 22,000 crore, these had gone
down considerably last year following the withdrawal of a key tax incentive,
which made the domestic exports price uncompetitive. “There is a big
opportunity to increase non-basmati rice exports by more than 20 per cent this
year, if we are proactive in our approach and the government extends support,”
Kumar observed.
The industry
has urged the Centre to allow a 5 per cent incentive under the Merchandise
Exports from India Scheme, until the Remission of Duties or Taxes on Export
Products, a scheme for exporters to reimburse taxes and duties, such as, coal
cess and mandi tax, is implemented
GIEWS Country Brief: Dominican Republic 19-May-2020
Source
Posted
19 May 2020
Originally published
19 May 2020
Origin
Attachments
FOOD SECURITY SNAPSHOT
·
Rice production in 2020 expected to remain at above‑average level
·
Paddy output in 2019 estimated above average due to larger sowings
·
Cereal imports in 2019/20 marketing year forecast at high levels
·
Prices of beans increased in April due to strong domestic demand
Rice production in 2020 expected to remain at above‑average level
The harvest of the first 2020 rice crop, which
acconts for half of the national production, is ongoing under favourable dry
weather conditions. Production is expected to remain at an above‑average level
due to enlarged plantings, instigated by high prices. Planting of the second
season crop is ongoing and, despite some concerns due to reduced rainfall
amounts since April, irrigation water availability in the main reservoirs is
officially estimated to be adequate. Paddy output in 2019 estimated above
average due to larger sowings Paddy production continued the increasing trend
in 2019 for the fifth consecutive year and the 2019 output is officially
estimated at 1.07 million tonnes, 12 percent higher than the previous five‑year
average. The high production mainly reflects an above‑average area sown,
supported by the high level of prices since mid‑2018. According to the National
Institute of Hydraulic Resources, despite the reduced rainfall amounts during
the last quarter of the year, the quantity of water in the major reservoirs in
2019 was adequate to guarantee the supply of irrigation water.
Cereal imports in
2019/20 marketing year forecast at high levels
Cereal imports in the
2019/20 marketing year (July/June) are forecast at 2.1 million tonnes, more
than 15 percent higher than the last five‑year average. Imports of yellow
maize, which account for about 70 percent of all cereal imports, are forecast
at 1.55 million tonnes due to high demand by the feed sector. The poultry
sector, which is the major destination of imported maize, continues to grow in
order to meet the sustained demand by the increasing population, the tourism
sector and the public school meal programmes.
Prices of beans
increased in April due to higher domestic demand
Prices of black and
red beans have been stable in the first quarter of 2020 as concerns over the
impact on production of the reduced rainfall in late 2019 dissipated. Despite
the above‑average output harvested in the first quarter of 2020, prices
increased in April, reflecting higher demand amid the COVID‑19 pandemic, and
were more than 10 percent higher year on year. By contrast, prices of rice were
stable in April after some increases in the previous months and were similar to
the year‑earlier levels, due to adequate domestic supplies.
COVID‑19 and measures
adopted by the Government
Amid the COVID‑19
outbreak, the Government issued a Decree to implement the restriction of
movements until 17 May 2020. The Agricultural Bank extended its payment
deadlines of the loans that were due between 18 March and 18 May 2020, in order
to provide tax relief to agricultural producers. The Government is also
increasing its social spending by distributing food kits to vulnerable children
in the absence of school meals and expanding the number of beneficiaries of the
cash transfer programme “Comer es Primero (Eating comes first)”.
In South Korea, centuries of farming point to the future for
sustainable agriculture
by Latoya
Abulu on 18 May 2020
·
Agriculture in South Korea is a blend of
centuries-old traditions and contemporary techniques adapted to a variety of
environmental conditions, making it a model to adopt in the effort to
future-proof food production against climate change.
·
With its emphasis on making the most of local
conditions, prioritizing native crops, maximizing the use of organic inputs
while minimizing waste, South Korea offers templates for nature-based
solutions.
·
State and local support of farmer’s
livelihoods, revitalizing rural areas and incentivizing youth to enter farming
are also ongoing efforts to help guarantee the generational sustainability of
agriculture.
South Korea has
been held up as a model by other nations around the world for its current
handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. But the country also leads the way on
finding solutions to the longer-term problems of agriculture and climate change
through its ancient farming traditions.
In its August
2019 report “Climate Change and Land,”
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change highlighted the importance and
urgency of changing our use of the land from practices that have led to
greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, soil erosion and water scarcity, into
mitigation and adaptation measures.
“Managing land
resources sustainably can help address climate change,” Hans-Otto Pörtner,
co-chair of IPCC Working Group II, said in a press release on
the report.
The report’s
recommended adaptation and mitigation responses seem to chime with South
Korea’s array of traditional agricultural techniques developed to sustainably
farm amid various unfavorable conditions, ranging from arid and humid, to
infertile and typhoon-prone. It was in this context that the country developed
the world’s first heated greenhouse, more than 200 years before they first
appeared in Europe.
These
traditions were compiled in a lengthy royal book, Nongsa jikseol, more
than 500 years ago, but there are also contemporary agricultural initiatives in
the country that point to a way out of the current environmental crisis, born
of the record-breaking heat waves, crop-destroying floods, and escalating food prices that South Korea
has experienced in recent years.
Ginseng
covered by protective black cloth structures while red pepper is planted to its
right, and organic rice fields below. Photo by Latoya Abulu.
Sustainable
land, forestry and biodiversity management
The town of
Geumsan in Chuncheongnam province, in the country’s west, is the heartland of
South Korea’s most famous crop — the medicinal root ginseng, known locally
as insam — and home to a 500-year-old farming tradition
recognized by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization as a Globally
Important Agricultural Heritage System (GIAHS).
“The site in
the Republic of Korea met all criteria,” Yuji Niino, land management officer of
the FAO’s regional office for Asia and the Pacific, said in an interview.
“Those criteria include all concerned issues also covered in the IPCC report:
sustainable land and natural resources management from biophysical,
socioeconomic and cultural interventions.”
Like many traditional
Korean landscape management techniques, it uses ecotones — transition areas
between different types of landscapes — conservation agriculture, and Confucian
principles. It accounts for the natural environment’s topography during farming
in order for local communities, rice fields, and farmland to coexist
harmoniously near forests with protected biodiversity such as mandarin ducks
and black kites.
The entire
agricultural process is practiced alongside a holistic recycling method that
uses waste generated from other farming sectors, such as using rice straw after
the grain harvest as ground cover and crop protection to prevent the growth of
weeds and retain soil moisture during drought.
Ginseng crops
are planted at eruditely precise locations depending on sun and wind exposure,
as well as rainfall, temperature and cardinal direction. Centuries of
cultivation have taught farmers here that ginseng grows best in mountain
valleys on a 25-30° slope, inclined from east to south and known as the shineul direction,
to maximize the amount of water drainage, sunlight and ventilation. This
precision is enhanced by specially angled shade structures of wood and cloth,
called gagae, that ensure the farming methods are adapted to the
environmental conditions.
In this way,
ginseng farming has adapted to Chuncheongnam’s mountainous topography, using
the biodiverse hill forests to its advantage in a symbiotic relationship: the
forests serve as green walls and windbreaks, controlling sun and wind exposure
for the crop to grow to optimum yields.
Rice is the most valuable crop in South Korea
and is water intensive. Photo by Latoya Abulu.
Enhancing soil
fertility and agricultural productivity
This integrated
use of land is also part of a developed Korean farming ethic combining
intercropping, multi-cropping, crop rotation, and resting periods, all rolled
into one dynamic system. It harnesses traditional knowledge of specific
nitrogen-fixing plants, soil bacteria, micro-organisms, and the relations
between all of them to optimize yields by increasing soil fertility, boost crop
health and biomass for livestock grazing, and reduce weed and pest
infestations.
A plot
designated for vegetables in this system will intercrop two or more plants such
as cabbage, pepper and radish, followed by a plot intercropping barley, beans,
corn or rye, and finally a plot for rice.
“All in the
same area, these intercropped sections then rotate, vegetables to grains then
to rice,” Park Young-soo, a local farmer, said in an interview. “They play
shifting roles of fixing nitrogen, maintaining the soil’s organic carbon
matter, balancing microbes, feeding decomposers, retaining water, and
recovering soil fertility.”
Farmers here
preventing land degradation with a nature-based method, using bryophytes (hair
moss and liverworts), which promote soil decomposition and are planted around
the roots of certain crops to prevent soil sloping and boost soil health and
water retention.
Traditional
Korean knowledge of soil nutrients and food fermentation techniques is also
used by some farmers to create natural fertilizer and pesticide. This is done
by culturing and proliferating indigenous micro-organisms — fungi, bacteria and
yeast — to enhance the soil’s fertility without the need for livestock waste.
Farming
field with rice planted on the left, rows of crops on the right and farming
slots surround-ing them using green manure crops to rejuvenate the soil. Photo
by Latoya Abulu.
Water
management to respond to desertification
Water retention
and management is a key focus of farming on the island of Cheongsando, off the
country’s southwestern tip. Through a 500-year-old agricultural technique,
farmers here have adapted to the region’s water scarcity and sandy soil to
build terraces for rice, a crop that is highly water dependent.
Called gudeuljang terraces,
they rely on underground aqueducts to irrigate rice fields on top. Farmers
stack rocks in towers, then lay a flat stone, called gudeul, on
top, followed by a layer of red mud and finally arable soil for the rice. The rice
grows in the soil, while the red mud retains and controls the amount of water,
with any excess dripping between the stacked stones and into the rice terrace
below.
Because of the
thin layer of soil used and the high rate of water drainage through the stacks
of stones, the soil tends to dry out easily and there is a high loss of
nutrients. So farmers constantly apply a traditional compost fertilizer to
supplement the topsoil, made of a mixture of grass, leftover animal feed, human
manure, and the antiseptic leaves from the silk tree to control pests.
The gudeuljang
terraces represent a land reclamation and food security strategy using endemic
rice varieties and maximizing the use of land without adverse effects on the
surrounding environment. The aqueducts simultaneously serve as a home to
diverse aquatic flora and fauna, and the technique can be replicated in regions
affected by desertification.
“We also
confirmed that the Traditional Gudeuljang terraces had higher plant species
diversity than conventional terraced rice paddies,” Park Hong-chul, a
conservation scholar, writes in a 2017 study, “and there
was a difference in life form characteristics between the two types.”
Other parts of
South Korea experience regular floods during the monsoon, such as Hadong county
in Gyeongsamnam province. Here, farmers have developed an agroforestry system
over a period of 1,200 years through planting and cultivating diverse tea trees
at the foot of once mostly barren mountains. Now long adapted to the ecosystem,
the trees themselves serve as barriers to the flooding of villages, and bring
in revenue for this region that accounts for 20% of South Korea’s domestic tea
production.
Plates
of Korean side dishes made with local plants. Image courtesy Latoya Abulu.
Dietary changes
and food waste
One of the most
important aspects of climate mitigation is our diet. Korean food
has gained in popularity worldwide as part of the Korean Hallyu pop culture
wave, and in the process shown how its traditional flexitarian fundamentals
constitute a proper ecological plate.
“Balanced
diets featuring plant-based foods, such as coarse grains, legumes, fruits
and vegetables, and animal-sourced food produced sustainably in low GHG
systems, present major opportunities for adaptation to and limiting climate
change,” Debra Roberts, co-chair of IPCC Working Group II, said in the press
release for last year’s report.
The Korean meal
is a mix of a local and seasonal plant-rich side dishes, fermented vegetables,
soups, spicy sauces, endemic rice varieties, where meat is more of a condiment
than the main course. Compared to most other diets, its production is low on
deforestation, water use and carbon emissions, thanks to reduced meat
consumption, and better for regenerating soils and augmenting biodiversity
through the farming of diversified crops.
The IPCC report
notes that 25-30% of food is wasted, due to problems in packaging and human
behavior. According to the report, from 2010 to 2016, global food loss and
waste accounted for 8-10% of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, and
cost about $1 trillion per year. Better dietary choices and reduced food loss
and waste can reduce demand for land conversion.
The importance
of not wasting food is an intrinsic part of Korean Buddhism, which emphasizes
respect for nature and for all living things.
“Thus, nothing
should be wasted,” the abbot of Boseoksa Temple in Geumsan county said in an
interview. He cited the Korean Won Buddhist ritual of baru gongyang as symbolic of a deep
appreciation for food that is offered, where not a single grain of rice goes to
waste.
Rice
straw is repurposed by being laid on the ground around the ginseng stems to
protect the seedlings and roots during winter. Photo by Latoya Abulu.
Resilient
livelihoods for farmers, stakeholders
As the climate
crisis intensifies, it is farmers who are on the front lines, both vulnerable
to climate change as it directly targets their livelihood, and also potential
change-makers who can push through adaptation and mitigation responses through
consumer cooperatives and policy.
The Act on the Promotion of Environment-Friendly Agriculture
and Fisheries and the Management of and Support for Organic Foods is
a South Korean policy that fosters farmers and fishermen who engage in
sustainable practices.
“The state and
local governments formulate plans and policies on environment-friendly
agriculture and fisheries and organic food, and facilitate voluntary
participation by farmers and fishermen,” Pierre Ferrand, the agricultural
officer at the FAO’s regional office for Asia and the Pacific, said in an
interview.
Goesan county
in North Chungcheong province is a template for local government support of
organic farming, and is where the International Federation of Organic
Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) has its regional office for Asia.
“The most
distinctive point about Goesan county is its willingness and support of forming
private-public partnerships with organic farming and consumer cooperatives
active in the county,” Ferrand said. “With the largest concentration of organic
farmers in Korea, Goesan county mainstreamed organic agriculture in all its
policies.”
South Korean
consumer cooperatives such as iCOOP Korea and Hansalim (which means “protecting all
living things”) are some of the largest community-led organic farming movements
in the world. During Seoul’s climate strike march on Sept. 22, 2019, Hansalim
members brandished flags calling for a paradigm shift and highlighted the
importance of farmers shouldering the responsibility of the health of consumers
who in turn shoulder the livelihoods of farmers.
Co-op members,
in seeking solutions to South Korea’s modern environmental, nutritional and
rural livelihood issues, carry out direct transactions of more than 1,900 purely local organic products in
more than 200 stores across the country, including online, grown by 2,220
farmer families.
Among the
cooperative’s varied agricultural initiatives is the “Save Korean Native Seeds”
project to enlarge the variety of its indigenous seeds through a seed farm and
seed bank. This is a measure to increase the country’s food sovereignty and
promote risk resilience and genetic diversity.
“[For farmers]
it is best to sow seeds from their own cultivated ginseng and rarely sow with
seeds from other regions or farmers,” Lee Hong-gi, a ginseng farmer, said in an
interview.
Farmers’ fairs
have also been emphasized through festivals such as the Geumsan Ginseng
Festival. One of the nation’s largest farmers’ markets, it features 189 booths
for farmers and their families who gather around festivities, entertainment and
the selling of various ginseng goods, from roots to medicine to wine and rice
cakes.
Farmers’
collectives have a colorful history in South Korea. They were known as pumasi and dure,
and served to integrate rural communities, optimize productivity, management
and reciprocity. Today, such farming communes can be seen in other
agriculture-based societies across the world, as with the minga in
some indigenous communities in South America.
Indigenous
Kichwa people of Ecuador helping each other plow a mountainous field during a
so-called minga. Photo by Latoya Abulu.
Incentivizing
farming
Today,
contemporary South Korean farming techniques focus on “smart” farming and the
latest technology, such as using the Smart Farm Dispersion Method, as a key future
growth engine to create jobs and optimize cultivating environments for crops to
adapt to climate change and improve agricultural productivity.
With plans to
invest $332 million in the
sector over the next several years and ranked the world’s most innovative economy in
2019, South Korea has seen innovations such as the underground subway farm
known as Farm 8. Created by a startup at Seoul’s Sangdo Station, it is a
solution that maximizes the use of urban idle space, thus reducing the need for
land conversion for rising food demand.
Revitalizing
rural areas and incentivizing youths to enter farming is also part of efforts
to encourage and pass down sustainable and traditional farming practices.
“To guarantee
the generational sustainability of agriculture, it is vital to promote
mechanisms that facilitate the intergenerational transfer of tangible and
intangible farming assets,” the FAO said in its global action plan report for
the current U.N. Decade of Family Farming. Family farmers are highlighted as
custodians of the world’s food biodiversity.
The South
Korean Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs has set up a
Back-to-Earth Promotion Project, Youth Farmer Fostering Policy, and the
Farmland Banking Project, aiming to promote and fund startups and businesses in
the agricultural sector and in farming villages.
The
Back-to-Earth project, in particular, is part of a growing movement in
South Korea where older generations and youths who feel increasingly
disenfranchised with urban life seek to live closer to nature in rural
communities, best depicted in the popular movie Little Forest. It
targets the problem of South Korea’s aging and depopulating countryside by
providing property, housing, and farming education support to invigorate
villages and teach farming techniques.
Small-scale
farming is the source of livelihood for many people in Zimunya communal land.
Image by Andrew Mambondiyani for Mongabay.
Grassroots
initiatives
Grassroots
initiatives that are part of a similar movement can be seen in the Milmeori
Farm School in Yeoju county and the Geumsan Gandhi School in Geumsan county.
These are boarding school programs that bring youths from cities to experience
the countryside, learn Korean organic farming, and cook plant-rich dishes from
their harvests.
At Geumsan
Gandhi School, teachers help urban students develop and network to begin their
own rural enterprises, organizations or trades through the creation of guilds.
There has been an increasing interest in agriculture among youths, said
principal Tae Young-chul.
“Throughout the
years, among the students who have graduated, more have gone into the farming
sector,” he said in an interview. “Approximately 10-15% now go into agriculture
jobs.”
This is
strengthened by the school’s farming class, where students learn about
sustainable Korean organic farming practices and are encouraged to embark on it
as a valued pathway.
“Here, we
prefer that they learn to do the farming work with their hands rather than
always using machines,” Shin Seong-gi, who teaches the farming class, said in
an interview. “We want the students to understand the organic processes behind
the work that is being done.”
These Korean
farming initiatives, ancient and contemporary, though scattered, can serve as
an inspiration and an initial approach to implementing the adaptation and
mitigation responses called for by the IPCC report.
“They are all
interconnected and highlight the importance to support sustainable and organic
farming across the country,” said the FAO’s Ferrand, “to not only supply urban
areas with healthy and environment-friendly (climate-friendly) products, but
also to ensure decent livelihoods in rural areas.”
Banner image:
Shin Seong Gi of Geumsan Gandhi School preparing a field with students to
cuultivate cabbage and radish during organic farming class. Photo by Latoya
Abulu.
In South Korea, centuries of farming point to the future for
sustainable agriculture
by Latoya
Abulu on 18 May 2020
·
Agriculture in South Korea is a blend of
centuries-old traditions and contemporary techniques adapted to a variety of
environmental conditions, making it a model to adopt in the effort to
future-proof food production against climate change.
·
With its emphasis on making the most of local
conditions, prioritizing native crops, maximizing the use of organic inputs
while minimizing waste, South Korea offers templates for nature-based
solutions.
·
State and local support of farmer’s
livelihoods, revitalizing rural areas and incentivizing youth to enter farming
are also ongoing efforts to help guarantee the generational sustainability of
agriculture.
South Korea has
been held up as a model by other nations around the world for its current
handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. But the country also leads the way on
finding solutions to the longer-term problems of agriculture and climate change
through its ancient farming traditions.
In its August
2019 report “Climate Change and Land,”
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change highlighted the importance and
urgency of changing our use of the land from practices that have led to
greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, soil erosion and water scarcity, into
mitigation and adaptation measures.
“Managing land
resources sustainably can help address climate change,” Hans-Otto Pörtner,
co-chair of IPCC Working Group II, said in a press release on
the report.
The report’s
recommended adaptation and mitigation responses seem to chime with South
Korea’s array of traditional agricultural techniques developed to sustainably
farm amid various unfavorable conditions, ranging from arid and humid, to
infertile and typhoon-prone. It was in this context that the country developed
the world’s first heated greenhouse, more than 200 years before they first
appeared in Europe.
These
traditions were compiled in a lengthy royal book, Nongsa jikseol, more
than 500 years ago, but there are also contemporary agricultural initiatives in
the country that point to a way out of the current environmental crisis, born
of the record-breaking heat waves, crop-destroying floods, and escalating food prices that South Korea
has experienced in recent years.
Ginseng covered by protective black cloth
structures while red pepper is planted to its right, and organic rice fields
below. Photo by Latoya Abulu.
Sustainable
land, forestry and biodiversity management
The town of
Geumsan in Chuncheongnam province, in the country’s west, is the heartland of
South Korea’s most famous crop — the medicinal root ginseng, known locally
as insam — and home to a 500-year-old farming tradition
recognized by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization as a Globally
Important Agricultural Heritage System (GIAHS).
“The site in
the Republic of Korea met all criteria,” Yuji Niino, land management officer of
the FAO’s regional office for Asia and the Pacific, said in an interview.
“Those criteria include all concerned issues also covered in the IPCC report:
sustainable land and natural resources management from biophysical,
socioeconomic and cultural interventions.”
Like many
traditional Korean landscape management techniques, it uses ecotones —
transition areas between different types of landscapes — conservation
agriculture, and Confucian principles. It accounts for the natural
environment’s topography during farming in order for local communities, rice
fields, and farmland to coexist harmoniously near forests with protected
biodiversity such as mandarin ducks and black kites.
The entire
agricultural process is practiced alongside a holistic recycling method that
uses waste generated from other farming sectors, such as using rice straw after
the grain harvest as ground cover and crop protection to prevent the growth of
weeds and retain soil moisture during drought.
Ginseng crops
are planted at eruditely precise locations depending on sun and wind exposure,
as well as rainfall, temperature and cardinal direction. Centuries of
cultivation have taught farmers here that ginseng grows best in mountain
valleys on a 25-30° slope, inclined from east to south and known as the shineul direction,
to maximize the amount of water drainage, sunlight and ventilation. This
precision is enhanced by specially angled shade structures of wood and cloth,
called gagae, that ensure the farming methods are adapted to the
environmental conditions.
In this way,
ginseng farming has adapted to Chuncheongnam’s mountainous topography, using
the biodiverse hill forests to its advantage in a symbiotic relationship: the
forests serve as green walls and windbreaks, controlling sun and wind exposure
for the crop to grow to optimum yields.
Rice is the most valuable crop in South Korea
and is water intensive. Photo by Latoya Abulu.
Enhancing soil
fertility and agricultural productivity
This integrated
use of land is also part of a developed Korean farming ethic combining
intercropping, multi-cropping, crop rotation, and resting periods, all rolled
into one dynamic system. It harnesses traditional knowledge of specific
nitrogen-fixing plants, soil bacteria, micro-organisms, and the relations
between all of them to optimize yields by increasing soil fertility, boost crop
health and biomass for livestock grazing, and reduce weed and pest
infestations.
A plot
designated for vegetables in this system will intercrop two or more plants such
as cabbage, pepper and radish, followed by a plot intercropping barley, beans,
corn or rye, and finally a plot for rice.
“All in the
same area, these intercropped sections then rotate, vegetables to grains then
to rice,” Park Young-soo, a local farmer, said in an interview. “They play
shifting roles of fixing nitrogen, maintaining the soil’s organic carbon
matter, balancing microbes, feeding decomposers, retaining water, and
recovering soil fertility.”
Farmers here
preventing land degradation with a nature-based method, using bryophytes (hair
moss and liverworts), which promote soil decomposition and are planted around
the roots of certain crops to prevent soil sloping and boost soil health and
water retention.
Traditional Korean
knowledge of soil nutrients and food fermentation techniques is also used by
some farmers to create natural fertilizer and pesticide. This is done by
culturing and proliferating indigenous micro-organisms — fungi, bacteria and
yeast — to enhance the soil’s fertility without the need for livestock waste.
Farming field with rice planted on the left,
rows of crops on the right and farming slots surround-ing them using green
manure crops to rejuvenate the soil. Photo by Latoya Abulu.
Water
management to respond to desertification
Water retention
and management is a key focus of farming on the island of Cheongsando, off the
country’s southwestern tip. Through a 500-year-old agricultural technique,
farmers here have adapted to the region’s water scarcity and sandy soil to
build terraces for rice, a crop that is highly water dependent.
Called gudeuljang terraces,
they rely on underground aqueducts to irrigate rice fields on top. Farmers
stack rocks in towers, then lay a flat stone, called gudeul, on
top, followed by a layer of red mud and finally arable soil for the rice. The
rice grows in the soil, while the red mud retains and controls the amount of
water, with any excess dripping between the stacked stones and into the rice
terrace below.
Because of the
thin layer of soil used and the high rate of water drainage through the stacks
of stones, the soil tends to dry out easily and there is a high loss of
nutrients. So farmers constantly apply a traditional compost fertilizer to
supplement the topsoil, made of a mixture of grass, leftover animal feed, human
manure, and the antiseptic leaves from the silk tree to control pests.
The gudeuljang
terraces represent a land reclamation and food security strategy using endemic
rice varieties and maximizing the use of land without adverse effects on the
surrounding environment. The aqueducts simultaneously serve as a home to
diverse aquatic flora and fauna, and the technique can be replicated in regions
affected by desertification.
“We also
confirmed that the Traditional Gudeuljang terraces had higher plant species
diversity than conventional terraced rice paddies,” Park Hong-chul, a
conservation scholar, writes in a 2017 study, “and there
was a difference in life form characteristics between the two types.”
Other parts of
South Korea experience regular floods during the monsoon, such as Hadong county
in Gyeongsamnam province. Here, farmers have developed an agroforestry system
over a period of 1,200 years through planting and cultivating diverse tea trees
at the foot of once mostly barren mountains. Now long adapted to the ecosystem,
the trees themselves serve as barriers to the flooding of villages, and bring
in revenue for this region that accounts for 20% of South Korea’s domestic tea
production.
Plates of Korean side dishes made with local
plants. Image courtesy Latoya Abulu.
Dietary changes
and food waste
One of the most
important aspects of climate mitigation is our diet. Korean food
has gained in popularity worldwide as part of the Korean Hallyu pop culture
wave, and in the process shown how its traditional flexitarian fundamentals
constitute a proper ecological plate.
“Balanced
diets featuring plant-based foods, such as coarse grains, legumes, fruits
and vegetables, and animal-sourced food produced sustainably in low GHG
systems, present major opportunities for adaptation to and limiting climate
change,” Debra Roberts, co-chair of IPCC Working Group II, said in the press
release for last year’s report.
The Korean meal
is a mix of a local and seasonal plant-rich side dishes, fermented vegetables,
soups, spicy sauces, endemic rice varieties, where meat is more of a condiment
than the main course. Compared to most other diets, its production is low on
deforestation, water use and carbon emissions, thanks to reduced meat
consumption, and better for regenerating soils and augmenting biodiversity
through the farming of diversified crops.
The IPCC report
notes that 25-30% of food is wasted, due to problems in packaging and human
behavior. According to the report, from 2010 to 2016, global food loss and
waste accounted for 8-10% of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, and
cost about $1 trillion per year. Better dietary choices and reduced food loss
and waste can reduce demand for land conversion.
The importance
of not wasting food is an intrinsic part of Korean Buddhism, which emphasizes
respect for nature and for all living things.
“Thus, nothing
should be wasted,” the abbot of Boseoksa Temple in Geumsan county said in an
interview. He cited the Korean Won Buddhist ritual of baru gongyang as symbolic of a deep
appreciation for food that is offered, where not a single grain of rice goes to
waste.
Rice straw is repurposed by being laid on the
ground around the ginseng stems to protect the seedlings and roots during
winter. Photo by Latoya Abulu.
Resilient
livelihoods for farmers, stakeholders
As the climate
crisis intensifies, it is farmers who are on the front lines, both vulnerable
to climate change as it directly targets their livelihood, and also potential
change-makers who can push through adaptation and mitigation responses through
consumer cooperatives and policy.
The Act on the Promotion of Environment-Friendly Agriculture
and Fisheries and the Management of and Support for Organic Foods is
a South Korean policy that fosters farmers and fishermen who engage in
sustainable practices.
“The state and
local governments formulate plans and policies on environment-friendly
agriculture and fisheries and organic food, and facilitate voluntary
participation by farmers and fishermen,” Pierre Ferrand, the agricultural
officer at the FAO’s regional office for Asia and the Pacific, said in an
interview.
Goesan county
in North Chungcheong province is a template for local government support of
organic farming, and is where the International Federation of Organic
Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) has its regional office for Asia.
“The most
distinctive point about Goesan county is its willingness and support of forming
private-public partnerships with organic farming and consumer cooperatives
active in the county,” Ferrand said. “With the largest concentration of organic
farmers in Korea, Goesan county mainstreamed organic agriculture in all its
policies.”
South Korean
consumer cooperatives such as iCOOP Korea and Hansalim (which means “protecting all
living things”) are some of the largest community-led organic farming movements
in the world. During Seoul’s climate strike march on Sept. 22, 2019, Hansalim
members brandished flags calling for a paradigm shift and highlighted the
importance of farmers shouldering the responsibility of the health of consumers
who in turn shoulder the livelihoods of farmers.
Co-op members,
in seeking solutions to South Korea’s modern environmental, nutritional and
rural livelihood issues, carry out direct transactions of more than 1,900 purely local organic products in
more than 200 stores across the country, including online, grown by 2,220
farmer families.
Among the
cooperative’s varied agricultural initiatives is the “Save Korean Native Seeds”
project to enlarge the variety of its indigenous seeds through a seed farm and
seed bank. This is a measure to increase the country’s food sovereignty and
promote risk resilience and genetic diversity.
“[For farmers]
it is best to sow seeds from their own cultivated ginseng and rarely sow with
seeds from other regions or farmers,” Lee Hong-gi, a ginseng farmer, said in an
interview.
Farmers’ fairs
have also been emphasized through festivals such as the Geumsan Ginseng
Festival. One of the nation’s largest farmers’ markets, it features 189 booths
for farmers and their families who gather around festivities, entertainment and
the selling of various ginseng goods, from roots to medicine to wine and rice
cakes.
Farmers’
collectives have a colorful history in South Korea. They were known as pumasi and dure,
and served to integrate rural communities, optimize productivity, management
and reciprocity. Today, such farming communes can be seen in other
agriculture-based societies across the world, as with the minga in
some indigenous communities in South America.
Indigenous Kichwa people of Ecuador helping
each other plow a mountainous field during a so-called minga. Photo by Latoya
Abulu.
Incentivizing
farming
Today,
contemporary South Korean farming techniques focus on “smart” farming and the
latest technology, such as using the Smart Farm Dispersion Method, as a key future
growth engine to create jobs and optimize cultivating environments for crops to
adapt to climate change and improve agricultural productivity.
With plans to
invest $332 million in the
sector over the next several years and ranked the world’s most innovative economy in
2019, South Korea has seen innovations such as the underground subway farm
known as Farm 8. Created by a startup at Seoul’s Sangdo Station, it is a
solution that maximizes the use of urban idle space, thus reducing the need for
land conversion for rising food demand.
Revitalizing
rural areas and incentivizing youths to enter farming is also part of efforts
to encourage and pass down sustainable and traditional farming practices.
“To guarantee
the generational sustainability of agriculture, it is vital to promote
mechanisms that facilitate the intergenerational transfer of tangible and
intangible farming assets,” the FAO said in its global action plan report for
the current U.N. Decade of Family Farming. Family farmers are highlighted as
custodians of the world’s food biodiversity.
The South
Korean Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs has set up a
Back-to-Earth Promotion Project, Youth Farmer Fostering Policy, and the
Farmland Banking Project, aiming to promote and fund startups and businesses in
the agricultural sector and in farming villages.
The
Back-to-Earth project, in particular, is part of a growing movement in
South Korea where older generations and youths who feel increasingly
disenfranchised with urban life seek to live closer to nature in rural
communities, best depicted in the popular movie Little Forest. It
targets the problem of South Korea’s aging and depopulating countryside by
providing property, housing, and farming education support to invigorate
villages and teach farming techniques.
Small-scale
farming is the source of livelihood for many people in Zimunya communal land.
Image by Andrew Mambondiyani for Mongabay.
Grassroots
initiatives
Grassroots
initiatives that are part of a similar movement can be seen in the Milmeori
Farm School in Yeoju county and the Geumsan Gandhi School in Geumsan county.
These are boarding school programs that bring youths from cities to experience
the countryside, learn Korean organic farming, and cook plant-rich dishes from
their harvests.
At Geumsan
Gandhi School, teachers help urban students develop and network to begin their
own rural enterprises, organizations or trades through the creation of guilds.
There has been an increasing interest in agriculture among youths, said
principal Tae Young-chul.
“Throughout the
years, among the students who have graduated, more have gone into the farming
sector,” he said in an interview. “Approximately 10-15% now go into agriculture
jobs.”
This is
strengthened by the school’s farming class, where students learn about
sustainable Korean organic farming practices and are encouraged to embark on it
as a valued pathway.
“Here, we
prefer that they learn to do the farming work with their hands rather than
always using machines,” Shin Seong-gi, who teaches the farming class, said in
an interview. “We want the students to understand the organic processes behind
the work that is being done.”
These Korean
farming initiatives, ancient and contemporary, though scattered, can serve as
an inspiration and an initial approach to implementing the adaptation and
mitigation responses called for by the IPCC report.
“They are all
interconnected and highlight the importance to support sustainable and organic
farming across the country,” said the FAO’s Ferrand, “to not only supply urban
areas with healthy and environment-friendly (climate-friendly) products, but
also to ensure decent livelihoods in rural areas.”
Banner image:
Shin Seong Gi of Geumsan Gandhi School preparing a field with students to
cuultivate cabbage and radish during organic farming class. Photo by Latoya
Abulu.
Concern mounts over food supplies
By
PAN MENGQI | CHINA DAILY | Updated: 2020-05-19 08:08
A vendor piles sacks of rice for sale in Phnom
Penh, Cambodia. The country has announced that a two-month ban on the export of
standard-grade white rice, imposed to ensure sufficient domestic supplies of
staple foods during the coronavirus crisis, will be lifted on
Wednesday. HENG SINITH/AP
Fears voiced as some nations impose export restrictions
Editor's note: The world faces huge challenges during the
COVID-19 outbreak, and maybe even greater ones when it is over. Here, in the
ninth part of a series titled "One World, One Fight", we look at how
countries can work together to fight the virus and meet the challenges when the
pandemic ends.
As many countries begin to ease measures imposed to contain the
novel coronavirus pandemic, Nguyen Quang Hoa, the founder of one of Vietnam's
biggest rice exporters, has one key issue on his mind.
He hopes that 12,500 metric tons of his sticky rice will
successfully reach its destinations.
Hoa, the founder of Duong Vu Co, said his rice is usually sold
to China－his largest market, Japan, South
Korea and some Southeast Asian countries. In March, the Vietnamese government
said it would restrict rice shipments due to concerns that global demand would
rise as the outbreak disrupted supply chains.
More than 100 traders in Vietnam, including Hoa, have been
affected by the government measure.
Vietnam, the world's third-largest rice exporter, resumed the
trade this month, but Hoa said hundreds of thousands of tons of the staple are
spoiling at the country's ports as a result of the curb on exports.
"Despite the ban being lifted, I will still lose money even
if the rice is delivered to customers as scheduled, due to an excess of
domestic grain being hoarded at ports. Some of this is rotting due to poor
storage," he said.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, some countries have imposed export
restrictions on food and agricultural products because of fears over
insufficient domestic supplies.
Export controls on medical supplies such as face masks and
surgical gowns are also affecting the global response to the growing threat
from the outbreak.
On March 20, Russia, the world's largest wheat exporter,
announced a 10-day ban on exports of buckwheat and rice over concerns about
panic buying in supermarkets. Kazakhstan and Ukraine followed suit shortly
afterward. On March 30, Cambodia announced limits on exports of some
agricultural products, and these took effect on April 5.
In Turkey, exports of lemons have been restricted, while Serbia
has announced a ban on exports of sunflower oil. Exports of legumes have been
banned in Egypt for three months.
Hoa said: "For people in countries that depend on food
imports, the restrictions make it difficult for them to buy supplies. Farmers
and dealers in countries that depend on food exports for their livelihoods,
lose their jobs. To a certain extent, it's a lose-lose situation."
In Indonesia’s new rice plan, experts see the
blueprint of an epic past failure
by Hans Nicholas Jong on 19 May 2020
·
The Indonesian government plans
to establish 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) of rice fields in the
peatlands of Borneo, in what experts say is a worrying repeat of a
near-identical project in the 1990s that failed.
·
The earlier mega rice project
(MRP) resulted in vast swaths of peat forests being drained and eventually
abandoned as it became clear that the soil wasn’t suited for growing rice.
·
The MRP left behind a wasteland
of drained and degraded peat that has since burned during the annual dry
season, spewing out a choking haze and large volumes of carbon emissions.
·
The government says the new rice
project will learn from past mistakes, but experts say it would still be
unfeasible at that scale and would risk the clearing of even more peat forests.
JAKARTA
— Nyoman Suryadiputra says he still vividly remembers the time he traveled deep
into the heart of the lush tropical peat forests of Indonesian Borneo in 1996
to document an ambitious agricultural project.
The
mega rice project (MRP), initiated in 1995 under the rule of the
strongman Suharto, was on a scale like no other: a million hectares (2.5
million acres) of rice plantations — an area twice the size of the island
of Bali — on peatlands across Central Kalimantan province to boost food security.
During
his time there, Suryadiputra, today the executive director of Wetlands
International Indonesia, captured the ambitious project on a Betamax camcorder.
What
he witnessed was an unmitigated disaster.
“Monkeys
were running away when the excavators were moving in,” he told Mongabay. “And
there were a lot of excavators that sank [into the peatlands] because the soils
were soft while the excavators could weigh up to 22 tons.”
He
also saw thousands of kilometers of canals being dug to drain the peat soils,
all without any environmental impact assessment.
“When
I was there, the workers were digging a canal from the west, while the others
were digging from the east,” Suryadiputra said. “When these workers were about
to meet in the middle, suddenly they said ‘stop!’ It turned out that there’s a
lake there. At that time, the satellite technology might not be as
sophisticated as now, so they just dug” without a clear plan.
The
government brought in farmers from Java and Bali to cultivate the newly cleared
land. But the nutrient-poor peat soil proved too unforgiving for the kind of
rice cultivation practiced on the mineral-rich volcanic soils of those islands.
The
government ultimately abandoned the project, leaving behind a dried-out
wasteland that burns on a large scale almost every year.
Today,
the government of President Joko Widodo is embarking on a similar mega project,
also in the name of food security, recently announcing the
clearing of 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) of rice fields — a move that
Suryadiputra warns is history repeating itself.
The
government says the project is necessary as Indonesia is already feeling the
brunt of a food shortage triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. The president
has also cited a
warning from the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) about an
impending global food crisis in the face of the coronavirus outbreak.
Just
as with the MRP a quarter of a century ago, the government is eyeing the
peatlands of Central Kalimantan this time around, specifically in Pulang Pisau
district, site of the biggest canal from the failed rice project.
“We
can’t afford to make the same mistake twice,” Suryadiputra said. “That’s why a
comprehensive study is needed. Because if we fail again, then we’ll waste
money.”
A canal of the Mega Rice Project
near Palangkaraya. Image by Indra Nugraha/Mongabay Indonesia.
Lessons
from history
Nazir
Foead is the head of the Peatland Restoration Agency (BRG), which was set up by
the president after disastrous fires in 2015 that raged across large swaths of
peat. He said there won’t be a repeat of the MRP fiasco because the government
has learned from its mistakes. Many of the senior officials now in charge are
veterans of the MRP and averse to making the same mistake again, he said.
Knowledge
of how to sustainably manage peatlands has also evolved in the years since, as
have government policies on peat protection, Nazir added.
Most
of the latter were put in place only recently, after the 2015 fires, fueled in
large part by the draining of peat swamps that render them highly combustible.
Among these policies is a designation of peatlands into two types: those with
deep layers of carbon-rich peat, which must be protected, and those with
shallower layers, which can be cultivated.
“So
in terms of policies, we are more ready,” Nazir said. “The paradigm of peatland
conservation is completely different than before.”
But
critics point to worrying signs that the new plan will end up as another
failure. Chief among them is that it relies on clearing large areas of
peatlands for cultivation, just like the MRP.
Basuki
Sumawinata, a soil and peat expert at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB),
said there were no successful examples of rice being cultivated on peat at
scale.
“In
the past, we wanted to open up a rice estate in 1970 in South Sumatra. That
ended up in failure,” he told local media. “And
then we wanted to open 1 million hectares in 1995. Of that 1 million hectares,
where has rice cultivation has been sustained on peatlands?”
A
more recent project is the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy
Estate (MIFEE) program, in the easternmost region of Papua.
Launched in 2011, it aimed to turn 1.2 million hectares (3 million acres) of
mostly forested land into the “future breadbasket of Indonesia.” But the
government has found it tough to implement, particularly because of land
issues: the estate, as planned, would overlap with conservation areas such as
primary forest and water catchment zones, as well as the territories of
indigenous tribes.
Activists
say the project has become a “textbook land grab,” and that it contradicts
Indonesia’s own commitments to protect peatland, as much of Merauke district is
made up of peat. And with the destruction of peat comes the burning: more than 11,000 hotspots were
detected in Papua in 2015 as a result of fires set deliberately to clear
vegetation.
“Conversion
of peatlands for agriculture as a solution for food crisis is feared to be
causing peat to dried up and damage the peat ecosystem in a large scale,”
Rusmadya Maharudin, the head of the forest campaign team at Greenpeace
Indonesia, said in a
statement.
In
2019, fires burned across nearly 270,000 hectares (660,000 acres) of land in
Central Kalimantan. Much of this was on former MRP areas, according to
Rusmadya, with the haze generated by the burning posing a public health threat.
Clearing more peatland for the new project will only exacerbate the burning and
haze, he said.
This
has grave implications for climate change, since peatlands are some of the
densest sinks of greenhouse gases on Earth. Indonesia is already one of the
world’s top emitters, with the bulk of its emissions coming from land-use
changes, including the conversion of peatland for plantations.
The canal being blocked in Pulang
Pisau. Image by Indra Nugraha/Mongabay Indonesia.
Farming
on hostile ground
Experts
have also questioned the government’s insistence on planting on peatland,
despite the failure of the MRP and other projects pointing to its unsuitability
for growing rice, the staple crop in Indonesia.
“Peatlands
in general contain few nutrients,” said ITB’s Basuki. “So if they are to be
managed for rice fields, it will need thorough and serious technology, with
costs that we might not be able to imagine.”
Suryadiputra,
from Wetlands International, said this was exactly what happened with the MRP.
In a pilot project, the government tried planting rice on 2,000 hectares (5,000
acres) of peatland in Sumatra’s Riau province. They found they had to add 2
tons of lime to lower the acidity of the soil enough to make it suitable for
rice.
“I
couldn’t fathom it,” he said. “Would the price of the rice become higher
because of the cost of the lime?”
Suryadiputra,
therefore, said the government shouldn’t focus on planting rice only, but to
diversify the types of crops, such as sago, a staple food in Indonesia’s
eastern region.
The
BRG’s Nazir said that for the current project, his agency had carried out its
own pilot, planting rice on an 80-hectare (200-acre) plot in a former MRP area.
They produced less than 3 tons of rice per hectare — half of the yield seen in
Java and Bali, and similar to the output in Riau, where much of the land is
also peat.
This
time around, technology will answer those concerns, the government says.
According to Agriculture Minister Syahrul Yasin Limpo, the government has
prepared a special variant of
rice that is suitable for peat conditions. Sarwo Edhy, the ministry’s
director-general of farming infrastructure, said farmers could
also use a special kind of tractor adapted for swampy peatlands that would
allow them to sow a hectare of land in a matter of hours, compared to five or
six days at present. Combined with the prospect of being able to farm during
the dry season, that makes peatland the future of farming in Indonesia, Sarwo
said.
He
added that while technical details of the plan still needed to be sorted out,
planting could begin as early as this month May.
Syahrul
said the first stage of planting would cover 164,000 hectares (405,000 acres)
of peatland, for which the Agriculture Ministry would need to bring in at least
300,000 farmers, or about a ninth of the current population of Central
Kalimantan. He said a lack of farmers was one of the reasons why the MRP
failed; half of the nearly 16,000 farming households brought over from Java and
Bali for the MRP abandoned the land and moved elsewhere, with many turning to
illegal logging.
This
time, Syahrul said, the ministry will coordinate with the provincial government
to prepare for the farmers needed. Airlangga Hartarto, the coordinating
minister for the economy, said the
government will soon conduct an environmental study and map out the
availability of land and labor, in a process that is expected to last for three
weeks.
Suryadiputra,
however, warned against rushing through the plan, given the scope of the
project, adding that a detailed study will take at least a year.
“I
advise the government to conduct a very comprehensive study on biophysics,
social, economic and cultural aspects. It can’t be done partially,” he said.
“If the government merely asks for a consultant, then it’s very dangerous.”
Peat fire in Indonesia. Image by
Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
Abandoned
peatlands
Nazir
said the government would be extra cautious this time by making sure that the
peatlands to be farmed are areas that have already been cleared in the past and
are now abandoned, including former MRP areas. This will serve the dual purpose
of both growing crops and ensuring the land doesn’t catch fire again during the
dry season, Nazir said.
“So
we’re not clearing peat forests, but bush that used to be burned and have
shallow peat,” he said.
But
Suryadiputra said it’s not as simple, noting that land with a shallow peat layer
might be formerly deep peat that has subsided as a result of draining. That
would make it prone to flooding.
“That’s
why the study can’t be done partially,” he said. “It has to be conducted using
satellite imagery for at least one year to see the land cover.”
Basuki
questioned the feasibility of finding enough suitable peatlands that has
already been cleared, without clearing new tracts of land. He said most of the
peatlands in Central Kalimantan are located in designated forest areas, which
makes them off-limits for plantations.
“There’s
another problem with peatlands in Kalimantan,” he said. “What’s the plan for
the 1 million hectares of ex-MRP area? They’re in forest areas.”
Israr
Albar, the director of fire management at the Ministry of Environment and
Forestry, said the Central Kalimantan governor had notified the central
government that some former MRP areas were earmarked for various agricultural
crops, including rice, sugarcane, tubers, and bananas, amounting to 300,000
hectares (741,000 acres).
Sunarti,
the head of the provincial agriculture agency, confirmed the size
of the land, but said it was specifically for rice, under a program initiated
by the government in 2017 and spanning more than 660,000 hectares (1.64 million
acres). She said the allocation of land was still pending approval from the
central government.
But
that appears unlikely to happen, according to Nazir. He said that because much
of the proposed land falls within designated forest area, it will require the
environment ministry to issue a forest conversion permit to allow farming
there.
“Of
course the environment minister is upholding the environmental law and the peat
protection regulation,” he said. “So the proposal might not be able to be
realized yet because it contradicts” environmental protection rules.
Dimas
Hartono, the director of the Central Kalimantan chapter of the Indonesian Forum
for the Environment (Walhi), the country’s biggest green NGO, said it would be
very dangerous for the environment ministry to issue the permit. He said the
land in question includes peat domes, a crucial part of the peat ecosystem that
serves as the source of water for the ecosystem.
“The
proposed area is a conservation area, between the peat hydrological areas of
the Kapuas River and the Kahayan River,” he said. “If these peatlands are
opened, it’ll become the second MRP and the peatlands in Central Kalimantan
will be destroyed again.”
Drained, cleared, and burned peat
forest in Indonesian Borneo. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
Reviving
the MRP
The
final location for the new rice plantations hasn’t been fully determined yet,
but the government intends to include Pulang Pisau district, based on
projections of high rainfall up to three months into the dry season.
Agriculture Minister Syahrul visited the district, surveying former MRP areas
by helicopter, on May 15.
“The
ones that are going to be optimized [to be planted with rice] are the former
MRP areas,” said Syamsuddin,
the head of the agricultural technology research agency in Central Kalimantan.
“Truth to be said, the past opening [of paddy fields in the MRP areas] wasn’t
supported with sufficient technology and innovation, unlike now.”
Nazir has proposed the idea of using the
abandoned peatlands from the MRP since 2018; to date, the BRG has mapped out
60,000 hectares (148,000 acres) of abandoned peatlands that it deems suitable
for agriculture because they don’t fall inside forest areas and the peat layer
is shallow.
Suryadiputra
said that if the government insists on cultivating the former MRP areas, there
are still many questions it needs to answer.
“Is
the mapping adequate? Let’s say the targeted land is located in shallow peat
areas, but is it also in flood areas? Is it connected to the MRP’s canal
network, which stretches to more than 4,500 kilometers [2,800 miles]? Do these
locations have sulfuric acid? What are the subsidence level of these peatlands?
Who are the people they want to bring in as farmers? Do they have agricultural
experience on peatlands?” he said.
IPB’s
Basuki also questioned the government’s readiness.
“If
you’re preparing for a food crisis by December, what month is it now? If you
want to open up 200,000 hectares, how much equipment will it take? Thousands of
excavators have to be prepared. Is it possible? No way,” he said. “So if
tomorrow you’re going to be hungry and you’re only starting to clear the fields
now, then it’s impossible. Why not do it since long before?”
Peatland in Indonesia drained to
prepare the land for agriculture. Peatlands accumulate their rich carbon stores
over thousands of years, but begin to decompose once they lose their moisture .
Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
Small
farmers, big odds
Activists
also see a cruel irony in the government’s plan. For years, the government has
pushed small farmers off their lands in favor of corporate-run mega
plantations, particularly for oil palms, and infrastructure projects.
That’s resulted in the loss of 128,000 hectares (316,000 acres) of smallholder
farmland each year, and 5.1
million farming households forced to find other forms of livelihood between
2003 and 2013.
As
of the start of 2020, there were 7.46 million hectares (18.4 million acres)
of crop fields left in
Indonesia, compared to 16.4 million hectares (40.5 million acres) of oil palm plantations,
which have undergone rapid expansion in the past decade.
“So
the size of [crop] fields keeps declining,” said Dewi Kartika, the
secretary-general of the Agrarian Reform Consortium (KPA). “And we know that
the government’s policy is to push infrastructure development, large-scale
investment and premium tourism, which targets villages that have productive land,
including customary villages.”
Yet
even as they lose their land, farmers are being asked by the government
to keep working during
the COVID-19 pandemic to make sure the country has enough food. The current
food shortage isn’t just because of the pandemic, activists say, but also a
result of government policies that favor large-scale monoculture plantations
managed by big companies instead of farms managed by smallholders growing
diversified crops.
“This
crisis has to be a wakeup call for the government that hasn’t carried out
agrarian reform,” Dewi said. “[The president] asked farmers to remain harvesting
and to work hard during the pandemic, but there are many farmers in the past
two months who have been threatened by eviction
from state-owned company land, including plantation firms, and reported to the
police. A farmer died in South Sumatra because of a
conflict with a plantation company. So there’s a contradiction. Farmers remain
unsafe.”
Dewi
said farmers who managed to hold on to their lands are able to withstand food
shortages, while those who sold their lands to plantation and mining companies
are at risk of not having enough food.
“They
can feed his families and their neighbors, they can even put aside some of
their harvests for people in the cities,” Dewi said.
But
land ownership in Indonesia is increasingly concentrated in a small number of
hands, with 1% of Indonesians owning 59% of
the land in the country. Farmers on average have less than half a hectare, or
about an acre. To tackle this inequality, President Widodo has launched a land reform program, under
which the government aims to issue titles for more than 9 million hectares (22
million acres) of land to small farmers.
In
2018, the KPA submitted to the government a map of priority areas for land
reform, covering more than 654,000 hectares (1.62 million acres) and home to
some 445,000 families.
“But
this hasn’t been fully supported by the government and these villagers are
prone to be criminalized by the government and companies,” Dewi said.
She
called on the government to fulfill its promise of agrarian reform through
redistribution of land, which she said would help both farmers and the state,
by ensuring greater food security. Without tying the agrarian reform program to
the plan to create new rice fields, the government risks sparking more
conflicts by taking over lands owned by locals that it deems to be unproductive,
Dewi said.
“If
we can’t answer what and who this plan is for, then new agrarian conflicts will
flare up,” she said. “Empty lands don’t mean they don’t have owners. In Papua,
many indigenous peoples have fallen victim to the food estate program there. So
it has to be ensured that this program is for farmers and traditional field
workers, so that farmers become the main actors.”
Banner
image: An excavator at work on the canal in Pulang Pisau district, Central
Kalimantan, Indonesia. Image by Indra Nugraha/Mongabay Indonesia.
China changes policy, buys Vietnam’s rice
0
19/05/2020 10:15 GMT+7
Previously, China imported rice
in small quantities from Vietnam, but the country has recently increased
imports from Vietnam and accepted higher prices.
The General Department of Customs (GDC) reported that the total
amount of rice exported to China in the first three months of the year reached
162,000 tons, accounting for 11 percent of total exports.
The average price that Chinese buyers paid for Vietnamese rice was VND12.7 million per ton, up by VND1.7 million than that of the last year.
Meanwhile, Vietnam’s average export price in the first three months of the year was VND10.7 million per ton. As such, the export price to China was VND2.7 million per ton higher than the price at which Vietnam sold to other countries.
China is buying Vietnam’s rice at a price much higher than the Philippines, which is Vietnam’s number 1 rice buyer.
Dan Tri newspaper cited statistics from GDC as reporting that in the last three months, the Philippines imported more than 500,000 tons of rice at VND9.9 million per ton only.
 |
|
Vietnam, after half a month of interruption, has resumed rice
export. However, the exports will be implemented under strict control to
ensure domestic food security. Only 400,000 tons of rice will be exported in
April, and the same amount is predicted for May.
|
Vietnam, after half a month of interruption, has resumed rice
export. However, the exports will be implemented under strict control to ensure
domestic food security. Only 400,000 tons of rice will be exported in April,
and the same amount is predicted for May.
While the government takes cautious steps in exporting rice, experts believe that Vietnam will not lack rice and it is necessary to let exports return to normal. If only small amounts of rice are exported, Vietnam will see rice abundance and the prices will fall. If so, both enterprises and farmers will suffer.
Duong Van Chin, a respected rice expert, former director of the Mekong Delta Rice Institute, thinks Vietnam should speed up rice export to be able to sell rice at good prices.
He said it would be better to export 5 million tons of rice by the end of May, because the winter-spring crop is the major crop in Mekong Delta, the rice granary of the country. Later, the government should allow export of 1.5 million tons more of summer-autumn crop rice, and that will be enough for this year.
“As the world prices are high, it would be better to allow enterprises to export rice in large quantities, which would bring benefits to both exporters and farmers,” Chin said. “High profits will help encourage farmers maintain their rice production, which is an important factor to ensure domestic food security."
According to Reuters, India, the biggest exporter, has resumed its exports after three weeks of interruption. Thai 5 percent broken rice price has dropped to $530-538 per ton from $550-580 per ton.
Food donation from the U.S. helps children stay in school and learning: in
times of COVID-19, school lunches more important than ever
Source
Posted
19 May 2020
Originally published
19 May 2020
Origin
Vientiane – Rice and
lentils donated by the United States arrived in Laos this week and was received
by the U.S. Ambassador to Lao PDR, Dr. Peter M. Haymond today at WFP’s
Vientiane warehouse. The donation consists of 68 containers of rice and 4
containers of lentils (1,290 metric tons in total) and will be used to cook
school lunches for some 90,000 primary school children in rural areas of Lao
PDR starting with the next term in September. For many children, this plate of
hot food is the only daily nutritious meal they will receive, a meal that they
had to manage without during the recent seven-week school closures due to the
COVID pandemic.
“I am so proud that
despite the challenges everyone is facing during the COVID-19 pandemic, the
United States is continuing to support daily school lunches for primary school
students in the Lao PDR. School lunches are proven to help students achieve
better academic results, and encourage higher attendance for all students,
especially females and underrepresented groups. The United States stands
together with the people and the Government of Laos to support the pursuit of
this country’s development goals,” said Ambassador Haymond.
Since 2008, the U.S.
Government’s McGovern-Dole Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program,
which is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), has been
supporting WFP school meals programme in Laos. With a total of more than US$60
million contribution, McGovern-Dole has helped more than 1.5 million children
access daily nutritious lunches through WFP’s school meals programme,
In order to shift to
long-term, nationally-run school feeding programs, WFP has started handing over
the supported schools to the government, with about 500 schools already
integrated into the national school meals programme to date. WFP is continuing
to provide technical assistance to the government beyond the handover. In
addition, WFP has made extra efforts to ensure and widen local supply of food
to schools and community ownership. A specific program, also supported by USDA,
has focused on linking school meals to local agricultural production.
Currently, all 925 WFP-supported schools receive contributions of vegetables
and greens from local farmers and school gardens.
“WFP’s school meals
programme is a social safety net for many poor and vulnerable families in
Laos,” said Jan Delbaere, WFP Country Director and Representative. “We have
learned that during the lockdown, poor households have the most acute
challenges in accessing food. As schools are gradually reopening, we are
attaching utmost importance to safe, hygienic standards and physical distancing
measures all throughout our logistics chain up to the delivery of school meals
in the villages. At the same time, we are doing our best to ensure families can
keep their children in school by guaranteeing a healthy school meal. We are
thankful for the United States as our long-standing partner in support of
school children and rural families in Laos, especially in these uncertain
times,” he said.
Contact
For more information
please contact:
Ildiko Hamos,
Partnerships and Communications Coordinator, ildiko.hamos@wfp.org, Tel. +856
(0)21 330 300 ext. 2229, Mob. +856 (0)20 7717 7913
Vilakhone Sipaseuth,
Communications Officer, vilakhone.sipaseuth@wfp.org, Tel. +856 (0)21 330 300
ext. 2930, Mob. +856 (0)20 2814 6333
Exclusive:
India resumes purchases of Malaysian palm oil - traders
MAY 19,
2020
MUMBAI/SINGAPORE (Reuters) -
Indian buyers have resumed purchases of Malaysian palm oil after a four-month
gap following a diplomatic row, with buying spurred by a fall in domestic
inventories and discounted prices, trade sources said.
FILE PHOTO - A worker unloads
palm oil fruit bunches from a lorry inside a palm oil mill in Bahau, Negeri
Sembilan, Malaysia January 30, 2019. Picture taken January 30, 2019.
REUTERS/Lai Seng Sin
The renewed purchases come amid
improving trade relations between the two countries after the formation of a
new government in Kuala Lumpur, with Malaysia signing a deal last week to buy a
record 100,000 tonnes of Indian rice.
Leading Indian importers last
week contracted up to 200,000 tonnes of crude palm oil (CPO) from Malaysia, the
world’s No.2 producer after Indonesia, to be shipped in June and July, the
sources told Reuters.
“Port stocks have dropped sharply
in India because of lower imports,” said a Singapore-based trader who sells
Malaysian and Indonesian palm oil.
Ship-tracking data compiled by
Refinitiv showed that India’s total palm oil imports for the first four months
of 2020 FELL by more than 50% from the same period in 2019 to 1.11 million
tonnes.
(Graphic:
India imports of palm oil from Malaysia vs Indonesia - here)
A restart to buying by India, the
world’s biggest edible oil importer, could further support Malaysian palm oil
prices FCPOc3, which have edged up from 10-month lows in recent days.
India early this year restricted
imports of Malaysian palm oil after then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad criticised
policies by New Delhi affecting the country’s Muslim minority.
The renewed buying has been
spurred by low stocks, while India’s relations with Malaysia have been
improving since a new government was formed in early March, said an Indian
edible oil refiner who contracted “a few vessels” for June shipment.
“I think the Indian government
will allow unloading of upcoming shipments. We can’t rely on one seller
(Indonesia) indefinitely, especially when you have to build inventory,” the
buyer said.
India’s commerce ministry did not
immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
“Our relationship with India has
become better since the formation of the new government,” said Malaysia’s
Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Mohd Khairuddin Aman Razali, who
was planning to visit India to negotiate palm oil-related issues before
lockdown was imposed.
Malaysian palm oil is now
available at a $15 discount to supplies from Indonesia which on Monday raised
its palm oil export levy by $5 per tonne, said a Mumbai-based dealer with a
global trading firm.
Indian purchases of palm oil from
Malaysia could rise further if discounts remain, he said.
Malaysian buyers are eager to
sell even at a discount as stocks are rising and production is expected to
improve in June, said a second Indian edible oil refiner, who bought Malaysian
palm oil.
Malaysia’s palm oil inventories
jumped to more than 2 million tonnes in April, well above expectations, as
production surged to a six-month high and coronavirus lockdown led to a slump
in demand.
India buys more than 9 million
tonnes of palm oil a year, accounting for nearly two-thirds of its total edible
oil imports, and took a record 4.4 million tonnes of Malaysian palm oil in
2019.
“Indonesia’s export tax is
allowing Malaysian sellers to offer a discount. It is tempting for Indian
buyers,” said Anilkumar Bagani, research head of Sunvin Group, a Mumbai-based
vegetable oil broker.
In coming months Malaysia would
start regaining lost share in Indian market, analysts said.
“To keep current demand levels,
local (Malaysian) CPO will have to maintain those discounts to soft oils and
the Indonesian CPO,” said Marcello Cultrera, institutional sales manager &
broker at Phillip Futures in Kuala Lumpur.
Palm oil competes with soft oils
such as sunflower oil and soyoil.Malaysian palm oil futures extended gains on
Tuesday after the Reuters story and closed up 1.9%.
Rice Procurement: Govt favours millers over farmers in
Rangpur
Published at 11:04 pm May 18th, 2020
File
photo: Farmers stack paddy in Raninagar upazila Dhaka Tribune
Paddy
growers said they have taken huge loans from money lenders for cultivating and
harvesting paddy
The
government has started buying rice from millers in Rangpur while direct
procurement of Boro paddy from farmers in the district has not begun yet.
According
to official sources, the government has decided to procure 30,000 tons of
boiled rice from millers, and 24,000 tons of Boro paddy from farmers in the
district.
The
rice will be bought at Tk36 per kg and paddy at Tk26 per kg.
The
Rangpur Regional Office of the Department of Food has already signed contracts
with 8,040 millers for the procurement in the district.
However,
farmers in eight upazilas of the district said the government is dilly dallying
in procuring paddy which is frustrating for them..
Paddy
growers said they have taken huge loans from money lenders for cultivating and
harvesting paddy.
As
a result, they are now compelled to sell paddy at Tk 18 to 20 per kg in the
markets to pay off the loans with interest, giving them returns that are lower
than the production cost.
Taking
advantage of the situation, millers are buying paddy in the open market
at low prices and selling rice to the government at higher rates, the farmers
said.
If
the procurement does not begin in due time, they have to incur huge losses,
said the farmers.
They
also said committees tasked with making a list of farmers in every upazila,
always gives priority to wealthy farmers.
An
official of Rangpur Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), seeking
anonymity, said his office tasked with making a draft list of farmers has
not begun the procedure yet.
The
draft list made by the DAE will be sent to the upazila parishad procurement
committee, which will select farmers by lottery. He added: "It will take
at least two months to complete the final list of farmers."
Asked
when Boro paddy procurement will begin, district food officer Abdul Kader said
the purchase of Boro paddy will begin after making the final list.
Regarding
the matter, DAE Deputy Director Sarwar Alom said paddy procurement will
continue till August. The process of paddy procurement is going on.
India resumes purchases of Malaysian palm oil
Reuters MUMBAI/SINGAPORE
| Updated on May 19, 2020 Published
on May 19, 2020
Indian buyers have resumed
purchases of Malaysian palm oil after a four-month gap following a diplomatic
row, with buying spurred by a fall in domestic inventories and discounted
prices, trade sources said.
The renewed purchases come amid
improving trade relations between the two countries after the formation of a
new government in Kuala Lumpur, with Malaysia signing a deal last week to buy a
record 100,000 tonnes of Indian rice.
Leading Indian importers last
week contracted up to 200,000 tonnes of crude palm oil from Malaysia, the
world's No.2 producer after Indonesia, to be shipped in June and July, the
sources told Reuters.
“Port stocks have dropped sharply
in India because of lower imports,” said a Singapore-based trader who sells
Malaysian and Indonesian palm oil.
Ship-tracking data compiled by
Refinitiv showed that India's total palm oil imports for the first four months
of 2020 FELL by more than 50% from the same period in 2019 to 1.11 million
tonnes.
A restart to buying by India, the
world's biggest edible oil importer, could further support Malaysian palm oil
prices , which have edged up from 10-month lows in recent days.
India early this year restricted
imports of Malaysian palm oil after then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad
criticised policies by New Delhi affecting the country's Muslim minority.
The renewed buying has been spurred
by low stocks, while India's relations with Malaysia have been improving since
a new government was formed in early March, said an Indian edible oil refiner
who contracted “a few vessels” for June shipment.
“I think the Indian government
will allow unloading of upcoming shipments. We can't rely on one seller
(Indonesia) indefinitely, especially when you have to build inventory,” the
buyer said.
India's commerce ministry did not
immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
Attractive discount
Malaysian palm oil is now
available at a $15 discount to supplies from Indonesia which on Monday raised
its palm oil export levy by $5 per tonne, said a Mumbai-based dealer with a
global trading firm.
Indian purchases of palm oil from
Malaysia could rise further if discounts remain, he said.
Malaysian buyers are eager to
sell even at a discount as stocks are rising and production is expected to
improve in June, said a second Indian edible oil refiner, who bought Malaysian
palm oil.
Malaysia's palm oil inventories
jumped to more than 2 million tonnes in April, well above expectations, as
production surged to a six-month high and coronavirus lockdowns led to a slump
in demand.
India buys more than 9 million
tonnes of palm oil a year, accounting for nearly two-thirds of its total edible
oil imports, and took a record 4.4 million tonnes of Malaysian palm oil in
2019.
“Indonesia's export tax is
allowing Malaysian sellers to offer a discount. It is tempting for Indian
buyers,” said Anilkumar Bagani, research head of Sunvin Group, a Mumbai-based
vegetable oil broker.
Published on May 19, 2020
Telangana’s prescription for farmers: Grow cotton on 70 lakh acres, paddy on 40 lakh acres
KV Kurmanath Hyderabad | Updated
on May 19, 2020 Published
on May 19, 2020
A cotton grower is seen plucking in fields outside Sangareddy
town. - Nagara Gopal
No maize in kharif; no Rythu Bandhu help for violators
In a paradigm shift, the Telangana Government has asked farmers
to grow cotton on 70 lakh acres of land against 45-50 lakh acres that they
generally do for the fibre crop every year.
The additional acreage in cotton is envisaged in the areas that
are recently brought under assured irrigation resources from the new projects.
The overall arable land in the State is pegged at 1.35 crore
acres for the two seasons.
“If you grow cotton under assured irrigation, you can reap
yields in the range of 12-15 quintals and can earn up to ₹50,000 an acre,” he said.
Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao has asked the
farmers to grow paddy on 40 lakh acres, including fine varieties, on 25 lakh
acres.
He has asked the farmers not to grow maize in the kharif season,
and instead to grow red gram. “We had reaped excellent yields in maize from the
recent season. The government is not going to procure this commodity if the
farmers go ahead and grow it,” he said.
Moreover, those who violate the cropping suggestions would be
rendered ineligible for the Rythu Bandhu scheme (under which farmers get a
financial assistance of ₹5,000 per acre each for the
kharif and rabi seasons).
“If you grow red gram instead of maize as prescribed by the
government, we will procure all of it,” he said.
The traditional turmeric area (on about 1.90 lakh acres) in and
around Nizambad will continue to focus on the crop undisturbed.
The vegetable acreage of about two lakh acres, chillies of 2.5
lakh acres and soya acreage of 3.50 lakh acres would be intact as the State
prepares a crop map.
State-level meet
To finalise a detailed plan for regulated agriculture, the Chief
Minister will convene a conference with Ministers, District Collectors and
district agricultural officials on May 21.
“It will discuss a break-up of crops for each district and
relevant seeds required to support the plan. A crop map for districts will be
prepared,” a senior government official said.
Godown space
With the State expecting a bountiful output next year, Telengana
is getting ready with additional storage facilities, including cold storage capacities.
The State is planning to build additional godown space of 40
lakh tonnes. Besides, cold storage facilities too would be developed.
Published on May 19, 2020
Rice Prices
as on : 20-05-2020 11:56:26 AM
Arrivals in tonnes;prices in Rs/quintal in domestic market.
|
Arrivals
|
Price
|
|||||
|
Current
|
%
change |
Season
cumulative |
Modal
|
Prev.
Modal |
Prev.Yr
%change |
|
|
Rice
|
||||||
|
Shahjahanpur(UP)
|
610.00
|
1.67
|
5030.00
|
2605
|
2600
|
5.89
|
|
Barhaj(UP)
|
90.00
|
50
|
7946.00
|
2500
|
2500
|
7.30
|
|
Fatehpur(UP)
|
43.20
|
28.19
|
1968.30
|
2425
|
2425
|
5.43
|
|
Lakhimpur(UP)
|
35.00
|
-12.5
|
1817.00
|
2450
|
2440
|
5.60
|
|
Kalipur(WB)
|
28.00
|
-33.33
|
2019.00
|
2400
|
2400
|
NC
|
|
Muzzafarnagar(UP)
|
22.00
|
100
|
3895.00
|
2670
|
2675
|
-7.13
|
|
Puranpur(UP)
|
20.00
|
-35.48
|
1965.00
|
2580
|
2600
|
4.45
|
|
Sirsaganj(UP)
|
14.00
|
-3.45
|
685.00
|
2660
|
2650
|
4.31
|
|
Sheoraphuly(WB)
|
10.70
|
-4.46
|
127.90
|
3100
|
3100
|
3.33
|
|
Hanagal(Kar)
|
10.00
|
-86.49
|
536.00
|
2000
|
1900
|
5.26
|
|
Champadanga(WB)
|
8.00
|
-42.86
|
483.00
|
3450
|
3450
|
15.00
|
|
Milak(UP)
|
5.00
|
-23.08
|
100.80
|
2560
|
2560
|
-
|
|
Jahangirabad(UP)
|
3.50
|
-12.5
|
169.50
|
2660
|
2650
|
1.33
|
|
Haridwar Union(Utr)
|
2.00
|
-60
|
137.00
|
4625
|
4625
|
-
|
|
Islampur(WB)
|
1.90
|
11.76
|
614.20
|
3500
|
3350
|
-
|
|
Raiganj(WB)
|
1.90
|
18.75
|
519.90
|
3400
|
3300
|
-
|
|
Anandnagar(UP)
|
1.50
|
25
|
184.20
|
2520
|
2510
|
7.23
|
|
Alibagh(Mah)
|
1.00
|
NC
|
65.00
|
4200
|
4200
|
NC
|
|
Murud(Mah)
|
1.00
|
NC
|
64.00
|
4200
|
4200
|
NC
|
Published on May 20, 2020
Published:
Monday, 18 May 2020
In recent weeks there has been an
increase in the prices of basic goods, especially of foodstuff, in Iran.
Rising prices, especially for
food items, are so staggering that state media and members of the parliament
have been forced to acknowledge them, sometimes calling them 'the coronavirus
of increasing prices.'
Rising inflation and declining
purchasing power are so extreme that Amir Khojasteh, a member of parliament,
admits, the country is struggling with a livelihood crisis and the “Consequences of inflation are more than
the coronavirus.”
He adds about the growth of
inflation and its pressure on people's lives: “Unbridled inflation has made
life so difficult for the people of our country that the consequences of the
coronavirus are insignificant. Within a few months, all items and needs of the
people have experienced a price increase of between 30 and 100 percent, and
there is no monitoring of these prices. (FARS news agency, 12 May)
Regarding the continuous increase
in prices and the pressure on the lives of the people, Ali Bakhtiari, another
MP, said: “Prices are going up at any moment, and it has made a lot of problems
for the people. It is really very difficult for people. (Radio Farhang, 12 May)
In a written notice, the MP wrote
to the Rouhani’s government: “Inflation and high prices of basic goods have
weakened the poor sections of society, why don't you act to control the high
prices.
“Businesses have been declining
for two months due to the outbreak of the coronavirus, but they are still
experiencing price growth, also to the presidency, there is a need to address
the increase in food prices, especially rice and legumes during the holy month
of Ramadan.” (Majlis website, 4 May)
On 4 May, FARS reported that “MPs
reminded officials of the unbridled high cost of basic goods.”
A Citizen Reporter from Saveh on
10 May wrote: “Inflation is high. Goods are on the rise. Even the visit of a
specialist doctor which was 45,000 Tomans, now has reached 65,000 Tomans. Food
is becoming more expensive every day. A 10-kilogram bag of Indian rice has
grown from 80,000 to 120,000. The fruit has also become very expensive. The price of an air conditioner in Khuzestan has
reached 23 million tomans.”
The high cost of food for the
people comes at a time when the regime’s government has allocated a large
portion of the people's currency in recent years, for the purchase of basic
goods. But every year, much of it has been deposited into foreign banks by the
regime’s officials, and they have basically not imported any goods.
Many of those who imported goods
were not basic goods needed by the people but are for making more profits for
themselves.
One of the goods which were
imported with the official 4200 Tomans currency was rice. But the regime’s
official importers sell it at 16,000 Tomans on the market.
Hamshahri Online website wrote
about the price of rice in Vietnam on 27 January 2020: “Vietnam, which its rice
costs about $600 a ton, has gained more market share.”
It is observed that buying a ton
of rice at a price of $600 with the official currency of 4200 Tomans, which
means, the purchase price of each kilogram of rice from Vietnam is a little
more than 2500 Tomans, but the same rice is sold to people in Iran for 16,000
Tomans per kilogram.
Shahrvand daily wrote on 2 May:
Rice is delivered to the consumer for 16,000 Tomans each dollar and not for
4200 Tomans for each dollar.”
One of the items that have risen
in price in recent weeks is the price of bread, given that bread is the aliment
of all the people and many of them cannot afford it, and its prices
have risen by about 40 percent in many parts of the country.
The overwhelming rise in food
prices and the inability of most people to provide the food they need have made
the Iranian people one of the poorest people in the world.
According to the Mostaghel daily,
the food baskets of more than 13 million workings, retired, and unemployed
families lack protein, organic materials, and hydrocarbons. (Mostaghel, 29
April)
Of course, in such a situation, for
most poor people, the presence of protein, fruits, and vegetables on their
table is a luxury, because many of them do not even have bread on the table.
FEI Foods invests in fully automated pouch line
- Last updated on GMT
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FEI Foods
has invested in a new high speed pouch line
The new installation at the producer’s Llantrisant, South Wales factory was facilitated by food machinery specialist Holmach, utilising equipment from its partners Jorgensen Engineering of Denmark and Lagarde Autoclaves of France. Fully automated, the line uses robotic handling to take pouches running from high-speed fillers and arrange them into pocketed retort trays that are then piled into stacks. These are then automatically loaded into the autoclaves.
Compliant for the US
Industry 4.0-compliant, the system is tracked throughout the process and uses equipment approved by the Food and Drug Administration, making the products FEI manufactures compliant in the US.
Commenting on the investment, FEI managing director Simon Lewis said: “FEI has worked with Holmach for nearly 20 years and we are very comfortable with Lagarde and Jorgensen as high technology partners for what has become the best ready-to-heat, pouched rice on the market.
“We have the highest capacity manufacturing facilities of this type worldwide and the equipment will allow us to produce many different types of product with any type of packaging. Holmach has offered us good UK-based process, technical and engineering support.”
Continued investment
The latest investment by FEI comes two years after it moved into a new 23,226m2 factory in Llantrisant, following a rise in demand for the convenience foods.
The increase in space has allowed the manufacturer to boost investment in the research and development of new products, as well as create 70 new jobs at the business.
Meanwhile, canned foods manufacturer Princes has completed the next stage of its £80m investment into its Long Sutton, Lincolnshire factory.
The installation of a hydrostat tower – using one of the UK’s largest mobile cranes – further advanced a two-year project at the plant, after the opening of a new pea factory in June 2019.
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