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• In
June 2020, the average retail prices of wheat and wheat flour significantly
increased by 9.6% and 14.4%, respectively, from May 2020; the prices of rice
Irri-6 and rice Basmati negligibly increased by 0.4% and 0.8%, respectively, in
June 2020 when compared to the previous month;
•
Headline inflation based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased in June
2020 by 0.82% over May 2020 and increased by 8.59% over June 2019;
•
The prices of staple cereals and non-cereal food commodities in June 2020 experienced
negligible to slight fluctuations, except for wheat, wheat flour and eggs which
experienced significant price fluctuations, when compared to the previous
month’s prices;
• In
June 2020, the average ToT significantly decreased by 11.7% from the previous
month;
• In July 2020, the total global wheat production for
2020/21 is projected at 769.31 million MT, indicating a decrease of 4.12
million MT compared to the projection made in June 2020.
SIALKOT, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Jul,
2020 ) :Under PM Agriculture Emergency
programme, a five-year plan costing Rs.6.63 billion was
launched in 15 districts of Punjab to
enhance profitability through increasing productivity of rice,said Deputy
Director Agriculture Abdul
Sami Tahir on Thursday here. .
Talking to APP, he said that under the program,the
mechanized transplanting of rice nurseries will replace the outdated manual
transplanting.
Under the programme, government will
provide riding type rice transplanter, walk-after type rice transplanter,
nursery raising machine, direct seedling drill, rice straw chopper, water tight
motivator and knapsack power sprayer, disk plough on 50 percent subsidy, he
disclosed.
Sami further said that the government will
also provide subsidy to the rice growers for the purchase of tested paddy seeds
and pesticides,adding subsidy amounting Rs.1500 per acre to the growers for
encouraging combined harvesting.
Rice
exports during FY 2019-20 grew by 5.12% as compared to the exports of the
corresponding period of last year
ISLAMABAD, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd
Jul, 2020 ) :Rice exports during
FY 2019-20 grew by 5.12% as compared to the exports of the
corresponding period of last year.
During the period from July-June
2019-20, Rice worth $2,175,493 thousand were exported as compared to the exports of
$2,069,618 thousand of same period of
last year.
According the data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, the exports of
Fruits increased by 3.80%, Fruits valuing $431,272 thousand exported as
compared to worth $415,497 thousand of same period of
last year.
Meanwhile, vegetables worth $299,290 thousand were also
exported in current financial year as compared to the exports of
valuing $233,910 thousand of same period of
last year.
During the period under review, Tobacco exports of the
country also recorded positive growth of 47.28%.
Tobacco worth $35,787 thousand was exported as compared to
the exports of
$24,217 thousand of same period of
last year.
ISLAMABAD: Rice exports
during FY 2019-20 grew by 5.12pc as compared to the exports of the
corresponding period of last year.
During the period from
July-June 2019-20, Rice worth $2,175,493 thousand were exported as compared to
the exports of $2,069,618 thousand of same period of last year.
According the data released
by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, the exports of Fruits increased by
3.80pc, Fruits valuing $431,272 thousand exported as compared to worth $415,497
thousand of same period of last year.
Meanwhile, vegetables worth
$299,290 thousand were also exported in current financial year as compared to
the exports of valuing $233,910 thousand of same period of last year. During
the period under review,
Tobacco exports of the
country also recorded positive growth of 47.28pc.
Tobacco worth $35,787
thousand was exported as compared to the exports of $24,217 thousand of same
period of last year.
Rice worth $2.175 billion exported in last fiscal year
Rice
exports during last fiscal year (2019-20) registered about 5.12 percent growth
ISLAMABAD, Jul 23 (APP):Rice exports
from the country during last fiscal year (2019-20) registered about 5.12
percent growth as compared the exports of the corresponding period of last year.
During the period from July-June, 2019-20, about 4,166,123 metric tons of rice
worth $2.175 billion exported, according the data of Pakistan Bureau of
Statistics.
The rice exports from the country during the same period of last year was recorded
at 4,120,137 metric tons valuing $2.096 billion, it added.
Meanwhile, country earned $790.792 million by exporting about 890,207 metric
tons of Basmati rice in 12 months of fiscal year ended on June 30, 2020 as
against the exports of 659,571 metric tons valuing $634.532 million of same
period of last year.
Meanwhile, 3,275,923 tons rice other then Basmati worth $1.384 billion also
exported during last year as against the exports of 3,460,555 metric tons
valuing $1.435 billion of same period last year.
It may be recalled that food group exports during fiscal year 2019-20 decreased
by 5.38 percent as it went down from $4.607 billion to $4.361 billion.
The decreasing trend in exports of food commodities were mainly attributed to
COVID-19 Pandemic, which has also effected the other economies of the world.
The exports of food commodities from the country during month of June,2020 also
decreased by 3.38 percent as compared the exports of the corresponding month of
last year
It is worth mentioning here that Rice crop cultivation targets for Kharif
season 2020-21 was fixed at 2, 957 thousand hectares in order to produce about
7.999 million tons to fulfill the domestic requirements as well as for
exporting.
The rice cultivation target for Punjab Province during current season was set
at 1,900 thousand hectares for producing about 4.200 million tons of the
commodity.
The average per- hectare crop out put in the country was fixed at 2,702 kg.
,Meanwhile, rice crop cultivation targets for Sindh were set at 800 thousands
hectares with production of 3.00 million tons.
The average per- hectare rice output in Sindh was fixed at 3,750 kg and in
Punjab it was fixed at 2,211 kg per-hectare.
During Kharif season 2020-21, about 67 thousand hectares would be put under
rice cultivation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to get about 0.190 thousand tons of rice.
Per-hectare output during the season under review in the province of fixed at
2,836 kg.
he added.
In order to exploit the agriculture potential of Baluchistan Province as well
as enhancing the farm income of small scale growers, rice crop would be grown
over 67 thousand hectares in order to produce about 0. 600 million tons of the
commodity.
INSIGHT-Signs of farm 'revolution'
in India as coronavirus prompts change
Mayank Bhardwaj, Naveen Thukral
* Farms plant record acreage by
machine as labour stays away
* Improved planting technique to
boost Indian rice yields
* Jobs may be lost as machines take
over planting
* New planting technique to
substantially reduce water usage
By Mayank Bhardwaj and Naveen
Thukral
RAIPUR JATTAN, India/SINGAPORE July
23 (Reuters) - For more than two decades, Indian farmer Ravindra Kajal
cultivated rice the way his forefathers had - every June he flooded his fields
with water before hiring an army of farmhands to plant paddy seedlings.
But a scarcity of workers this year
because of the coronavirus forced Kajal to change. He irrigated the field just
enough to moisten the soil and leased a drilling machine to directly sow seeds
on his 9-acre (3.6-hectare) plot.
“Since I was more than comfortable
with the tried-and-tested way of growing rice, I opted for the new method with
some trepidation,” said Kajal, 46, looking over his field, green with rice
saplings, in the Raipur Jattan village in Haryana state.
“But I’ve already saved around 7,500
rupees ($100) per acre because I hardly spent on water and workers this year,”
he said.
India is the world’s biggest
exporter of rice and the world’s second-biggest producer after China. Across
the country’s grain bowl states of Haryana and neighbouring Punjab, thousands
of farmers like Kajal have been forced by the coronavirus to mechanise
planting.
They are still wary of the
technology and overturning the time-honoured use of manual labour.
But Kahan Singh Pannu, Punjab’s
agriculture secretary, is convinced a historic change is underway that could
dramatically increase India’s rice output, which in turn could impact world
markets.
“It is no less than a revolution in
Indian agriculture,” he told Reuters.
Government officials say the
so-called direct seeding of rice (DSR) method could increase yields by about
one-third and slash costs on workers and water.
The DSR machines allow farmers to
grow more than 30 saplings per square metre against the usual 15 to 18
seedlings, said Naresh Gulati, a state government farm official in Punjab.
Punjab is the home of the 1960s
Green Revolution that led to a spike in crop yields. This year, farmers there
have used seed drilling machines to sow rice on more than half a million
hectares, a big increase compared with less than 50,000 hectares in 2019,
growers and government officials said.
Pannu expects DSR use to jump again
next year.
“More and more farmers are using the
DSR technology which seems to be so promising that the entire 2.7 million
hectares of Punjab’s rice area could come under it next year, which will be a
watershed for India’s rice production,” he said.
Avinash Kishore, a research fellow
at the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI),
said if this year’s crop was good, DSR would be the way forward.
“The scale of this year’s shift to
the DSR is a momentous change in rice cultivation in India,” he said.
Sudhanshu Singh, a senior agronomist
at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, said the shift
to DSR was “one of the rare positive fallouts from COVID.”
NO MIGRANT LABOUR
None of the world’s major rice
exporting nations - India, Vietnam and Thailand - makes significant use of
seeding machines.
They have come into play in a big
way in India this year because hundreds of thousands of migrant labourers from
Bihar and Jharkhand states in the east did not arrive in the northern grain
belt for the 2020 planting season due to the coronavirus lockdown.
That pushed up the price of local
workers and made it more economical for farmers to lease rice planting machines
rather than pay for hired help, said Jaskaran Singh Mahal, a director at the
Punjab Agricultural University.
Farm wages have gone up by 1,500
rupees an acre to about 4,500 rupees this year, and growers need around half a
dozen workers to transplant rice paddy on a one acre plot.
In comparison, farmers can hire
planting machines for 5,000 to 6,000 rupees per acre, which can cover 25 to 30
acres in a day, rice growers said.
“Other than helping us save on major
overheads such as water and labour, DSR is swift, unlike the old method which
was tedious and time-consuming,” said Devinder Singh Gill, a farmer in Punjab’s
Moga district, well known for its aromatic basmati rice.
The conventional method requires
farmers to sow seeds in nurseries and then wait for 20 to 30 days before
manually transplanting the seedlings into plantation fields that are ankle-deep
in water.
Seeding machines allow farmers to
bypass the nursery stage and plant straight into fields.
Water conservation is another key
attribute of DSR, which is crucial in a mostly dry, monsoon dependent country
like India.
Under the conventional method, 3,000
to 5,000 litres of water is used in India to produce 1 kg of rice - the most
water-thirsty crop - and DSR allows growers to cut water use by at least 50% to
60%, farmers and government officials said.
The main challenge for farmers using
direct seeding machines is managing weeds, which require the spraying of
herbicides through the season.
Still, even factoring in the extra
costs of these applications, the overall cost of cultivation is substantially
lower under DSR, said Kajal, the farmer in Haryana.
Another drawback will be that if the
method is adopted across the farm belt, there will be huge unemployment in the
eastern states next year.
But farmers say they will wait to
see the harvest in October before deciding whether to stick with the technology
next year.
“The new technology leads to a lot
of saving on account of water and labour, but the real test lies in
productivity and farmers will not be fully convinced unless they see some rise
in their yields,” said Ashok Singh, a rice farmer. ($1=74.93 rupees)
Reporting by Mayank Bhardwaj and
Naveen Thukral; Editing by Gavin Maguire and Raju Gopalakrishnan
Paddy sowing season amid pandemic:
Amid migrant labour shortage, more farmers opt for mechanised transplanting in
Punjab
The technique saves time, labour and cuts cost by nearly Rs 4,000-5,000
per acre compared to manual transplanting, said agriculture officials.
Written by Anju Agnihotri Chaba | Jalandhar | Published: July 23, 2020
12:56:16 am
A whopping increase in area of mechanical transplanting has been
seen this season in Punjab. (Representational)
At a time when Punjab is facing acute shortage of migrant labour
specialising in conventional transplantation of paddy (hailing primarily from
Bihar and Uttar Pradesh) amid the pandemic, around a thousand rice/paddy transplanting machines — mostly
made in China, Japan and Korea — are being used in agricultural fields.
The technique saves time, labour and cuts cost by nearly Rs
4,000-5,000 per acre compared to manual transplanting, said agriculture
officials.
A whopping increase in area of mechanical transplanting has been
seen this season in Punjab. But while this has been technique available to
farmers for over a decade, it did not get a good response because farmers find
‘paddy nursery’ raising for transplanters a cumbersome process.
Collectively, these transplanters have cultivated 52,000
hectares (1,28,440 acres) in 40 days from June 10 to July 11 — an 8-fold
increase in area as compared to last year. Around 2,000-3000 hectares more may
be covered under this system by the end of rice sowing this month.
“Since mechanical transplantation was introduced in Punjab in
2007-08, the state has never transplanted more than 3,000 to 4,000 hectares
paddy per year with this method, barring last year when 6,500 hectares (16,055
acres) was brought under it,” said a senior officer in the Punjab agriculture
department, adding that this time there was a huge response from farmers, and
labour shortage is the main reason.
This year alone, 700 paddy transplanters (several of which
reached farmers only in July) were purchased by farmers of Punjab while the
number of these machines was just 313 till last year.
How did demand for this method
first arise?
The need for rice transplanters was first felt in the state
following the enactment of MG-NREGS Act in 2005, which led several migrant
labourers, who were experts in paddy transplanting, to staying back in their
home states — Bihar and UP — to avail the 100 days’ guaranteed employment at
their native places rather than coming to Punjab for two months in the paddy
sowing season.
Then Punjab imported 171 Chinese and Japanese-made transplanters
till 2018 and then 142 were more in 2019. In the ongoing season, 700 have been
purchased.
There are three types of these machines — the ‘walk-behind’ (the
person walks with it in the puddled field) having two models (4-row and 6-row),
the ‘single wheel ride on’ and ‘four-wheeled ride on’. While the ‘walk-behind’
model costs around Rs 3-3.50 lakh each, the ‘single wheel ride on’ and ‘four
wheel ride on’ machines cost Rs 2.5- 3.5 lakh and Rs 10-14 lakh respectively.
While most of them are made in China or Japan, some Indian companies’
transplanters were also made available to farmers at 40-50 per cent subsidy.
However, farmers are still waiting for the subsidy for the purchase they made
last year.
“Walk-behind and single wheel machines sow 4-5 acres each a day
and two persons are sufficient for it — one for running the machine and other
to supply nursery for feeding in the machine. Four-wheeled ride on can sow 8-10
acres in a day,” said Agricultural Engineering Manmohan Kalia, nodal officer,
Farm Machinery, Punjab, and joint director (officiating), Agriculture
Engineering.
Farmer’s verdict
Farmer Major Singh Bajwa of Bajwa Kalan village under Shahkot
sub-division of Jalandhar district, who has done mechanical transplantation on
his 60 acres field this time, said he had purchased a transplanter last year
and the results were good, so he has increased the area this year.
“With this machine, I am tension-free as it saves huge labour
cost too,” he said, adding that training nursery is a little labour-intensive
and technical but one needs to get used to it.
“I and my fellow farmer Rajinder Singh had developed a seedler
for nursery growing for this method and it will make nursery growing simple,”
he said, adding that a trial was done this time but from next time it will be
fully functional.
Sukhjit Singh Diwala of Diwala village in Ludhiana has sown his
36 acres with a walk-behind machine this year and also provided his machine on
rent. He raised a nursery for fellow farmers of his village and did mechanical
transplanting on 100 acres in his village including his own fields.
“Finding labour was becoming difficult. I purchased a translator
last year o experiment on my own field and it was so successful that I got 4-5
quintals more yield because of increasing of a number of plants in the fields
with this method,” said he, adding that to sort the nursery raising method,
Punjab Agriculture University (PAU), Ludhiana, had invented a new machine to
grow nursery for paddy transplanters and it ill come in the market from next
season.
This machine will sow nursery for 100 acres in a 3-4 days with
the help of two persons while currently, it takes 20 days for seven persons to
raise nursery for 100 acres.
In Punjab, 27-30 lakh hectares area is under paddy crop
including Basmati, for which around 6 to 6.5 lakh migrant labourers are
required to transplant paddy nursery in the fields for 40-50 days. Punjab needs
around 20,000 paddy transplanters to cover the entire area excluding DSR area.
And with an increased number of machines, the rental rates of these machines
would also come down for small and marginal farmers.
Manual versus mechanical
transplanting
Under mechanical technique, a nursery is raised on polythene
sheets, each 20 feet long and 22 inches wide with a 1 inch layer of soil. As 80
feet long and 22 inches wide area is required to grow paddy for one acre.
Around 7-8 kg seed is required for one acre and after sowing, it is covered
with dry, fine earth. After proper watering, nursery gets ready in 25-30 days
depending on the varieties of rice and is transplanted in puddle fields with
the transplanter machine. The nursery is fed into machine-like cakes in 22×11
inches pieces, which carries hundreds of plants, and machine transplants the
same ensuring appropriate space between the plants and the rows. It takes
around one and half hours to sow one acre. Using this method, around 33 plants
are sown per sq. meters. Because of the specified distance from plant to plant
and between rows, the airing is proper in the field and such fields are less
prone to fungal and blight diseases. If a farmer owns this machine, the total
cost of paddy sowing will come to around Rs 3,500-4,000 which includes
preparation of nursery, diesel cost, preparation of field, which needs tilling
and puddling before transplanting seeds.
In manual transplanting, the per acre costs comes to Rs
8,000-9,000. As the expenses up to puddling are same i.e. Rs 2,000 per acre,
while the cost of nursery growing is up to Rs 800-1,000 and labour cost is Rs
5,000-6,000 per acre. With this method, only 3 kg seed is required per acre
because in manual transplanting, only 22-25 plants are sown per sq. mt by the
labour.
What is the cost of mechanical
transplanting for farmers who have to rent it?
Currently, there are only 1,000 machines and farmers who go for
mechanical sowing hire it from fellow farmers who own them.
Signs of
farm 'revolution' in India as coronavirus prompts change
Wednesday, July 22, 2020 10:37 p.m. EDT by Thomson Reuters
FILE PHOTO: A man walks in a filed
covered with rice saplings at Kullan village in Kashmir's Ganderbal district
June 18, 2020. REUTERS/Danis
By Mayank Bhardwaj and Naveen
Thukral
RAIPUR JATTAN, India/SINGAPORE
(Reuters) - For more than two decades, Indian farmer Ravindra Kajal cultivated
rice the way his forefathers had - every June he flooded his fields with water
before hiring an army of farmhands to plant paddy seedlings.
But a scarcity of workers this
year because of the coronavirus forced Kajal to change. He irrigated the field
just enough to moisten the soil and leased a drilling machine to directly sow
seeds on his 9-acre (3.6-hectare) plot.
"Since I was more than
comfortable with the tried-and-tested way of growing rice, I opted for the new
method with some trepidation," said Kajal, 46, looking over his field,
green with rice saplings, in the Raipur Jattan village in Haryana state.
"But I've already saved
around 7,500 rupees ($100) per acre because I hardly spent on water and workers
this year," he said.
India is the world's biggest
exporter of rice and the world's second-biggest producer after China. Across
the country's grain bowl states of Haryana and neighbouring Punjab, thousands
of farmers like Kajal have been forced by the coronavirus to mechanise
planting.
They are still wary of the
technology and overturning the time-honoured use of manual labour.
But Kahan Singh Pannu, Punjab's
agriculture secretary, is convinced a historic change is underway that could
dramatically increase India's rice output, which in turn could impact world
markets.
"It is no less than a
revolution in Indian agriculture," he told Reuters.
Government officials say the
so-called direct seeding of rice (DSR) method could increase yields by about
one-third and slash costs on workers and water.
The DSR machines allow farmers to
grow more than 30 saplings per square metre against the usual 15 to 18
seedlings, said Naresh Gulati, a state government farm official in Punjab.
Punjab is the home of the 1960s
Green Revolution that led to a spike in crop yields. This year, farmers there
have used seed drilling machines to sow rice on more than half a million
hectares, a big increase compared with less than 50,000 hectares in 2019,
growers and government officials said.
Pannu expects DSR use to jump
again next year.
"More and more farmers are
using the DSR technology which seems to be so promising that the entire 2.7
million hectares of Punjab's rice area could come under it next year, which
will be a watershed for India's rice production," he said.
Avinash Kishore, a research
fellow at the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute
(IFPRI), said if this year's crop was good, DSR would be the way forward.
"The scale of this year's
shift to the DSR is a momentous change in rice cultivation in India," he
said.
Sudhanshu Singh, a senior
agronomist at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines,
said the shift to DSR was "one of the rare positive fallouts from
COVID."
NO MIGRANT LABOUR
None of the world's major rice
exporting nations - India, Vietnam and Thailand - makes significant use of
seeding machines.
They have come into play in a big
way in India this year because hundreds of thousands of migrant labourers from
Bihar and Jharkhand states in the east did not arrive in the northern grain
belt for the 2020 planting season due to the coronavirus lockdown.
That pushed up the price of local
workers and made it more economical for farmers to lease rice planting machines
rather than pay for hired help, said Jaskaran Singh Mahal, a director at the
Punjab Agricultural University.
Farm wages have gone up by 1,500
rupees an acre to about 4,500 rupees this year, and growers need around half a
dozen workers to transplant rice paddy on a one acre plot.
In comparison, farmers can hire
planting machines for 5,000 to 6,000 rupees per acre, which can cover 25 to 30
acres in a day, rice growers said.
"Other than helping us save
on major overheads such as water and labour, DSR is swift, unlike the old
method which was tedious and time-consuming," said Devinder Singh Gill, a
farmer in Punjab's Moga district, well known for its aromatic basmati rice.
The conventional method requires
farmers to sow seeds in nurseries and then wait for 20 to 30 days before
manually transplanting the seedlings into plantation fields that are ankle-deep
in water.
Seeding machines allow farmers to
bypass the nursery stage and plant straight into fields.
Water conservation is another key
attribute of DSR, which is crucial in a mostly dry, monsoon dependent country
like India.
Under the conventional method,
3,000 to 5,000 litres of water is used in India to produce 1 kg of rice - the
most water-thirsty crop - and DSR allows growers to cut water use by at least
50% to 60%, farmers and government officials said.
The main challenge for farmers
using direct seeding machines is managing weeds, which require the spraying of
herbicides through the season.
Still, even factoring in the
extra costs of these applications, the overall cost of cultivation is
substantially lower under DSR, said Kajal, the farmer in Haryana.
Another drawback will be that if
the method is adopted across the farm belt, there will be huge unemployment in
the eastern states next year.
But farmers say they will wait to
see the harvest in October before deciding whether to stick with the technology
next year.
"The new technology leads to
a lot of saving on account of water and labour, but the real test lies in
productivity and farmers will not be fully convinced unless they see some rise
in their yields," said Ashok Singh, a rice farmer.
(Reporting by Mayank Bhardwaj and
Naveen Thukral; Editing by Gavin Maguire and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
Vietnam’s rice export turnover in
the first five months increased by 13 percent compared with the same period
last year with the average export price of $485 per ton, a report said.
Vietnam is one of the biggest
rice exporters in the world, but it is among the lowest income earners.
According to Pham Thai Binh,
general director of Trung An Hi-tech Agriculture JSC, Vietnam mostly exports
low-end low-cost rice with lower quality than Thai and Cambodian products.
“Even when Vietnam sells high-quality rice, buyers also try to force the prices
down,” Binh said.
Experts believe that the problem lies in branding. According to Professor Vo
Tong Xuan, having the best rice in the world will bring great opportunities to
Vietnam.
Under the rice export strategy approved by the government, Vietnam will
gradually reduce the export volume and increase the export value.
Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Nguyen Xuan Cuong, at a working
session with rice exporters, said Vietnam is ‘restructuring rice production’ by
prioritizing investments in some varieties to heighten the value of the rice.
Minister of Agriculture and
Rural Development Nguyen Xuan Cuong, at a working session with rice
exporters, said Vietnam is ‘restructuring rice production’ by prioritizing
investments in some varieties to heighten the value of the rice.
“Rice is not only a kind of food,
but can become medicine and functional food,” he said.
Quang Tri province has built a
model of 600 hectares of organic rice growing area, which aims to develop the
best rice.
With rapid growth of 15 percent of the animal feed industry over many years,
Vietnam has to import 90 percent of oil cake brans needed from India to serve
domestic production.
In Vietnam’s rice value chain in
the time to come, not only rice grains, but rice bran will also be considered a
key product.
CJ Group in Vietnam has suggested establishing a rice research center in
Vietnam which would find ways to improve the value of Vietnam’s rice in the
world market.
Chang Bok Sang from CJ said Vietnam has great potential for producing and
exporting rice, but still cannot fully exploit the potential and optimize the
added value.
“In order to fully exploit the potential and minimize risks as exports depends
on import countries, it is necessary to increase the added value of rice by
making processed products,” he said.
Want Want, the group with the largest rice cake market share in Taiwan, has
come to Vietnam to set up a rice cake factory in Tien Giang. Once it becomes
operational, slated for early 2021, it will use 6,000 tons of rice a year.
Prime Minister Hun Sen said
yesterday that new farming techniques being implemented in the Kingdom will
help it to reach a major target of achieving one million tonnes of milled rice
exports which was set five years ago.
Mr Hun Sen said this during a
visit, along with Agriculture Minister Veng Sakhon and Australian Ambassador
Pablo Kang to see demonstrations of modern farming machinery and a signature
irrigation scheme.
The visit was also to showcase
the ongoing development of Cambodia’s agricultural sector now considered the
major pillar of the country’s economic prospects during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ambassador Pablo Kang with Prime Minister Hun Sen in Takeo
province. KT/Khem Sovannara
“These new farming techniques are
much easier than before, as these farmers now have hydraulic systems and modern
agriculture factories to help us achieve our goals. However, we do still have
problems such as rice diseases, insufficient transportation and machinery
needed to process and exports such large volumes,” Mr Hun Sen said.
He said the one-million tonne
export milestone can be achieved through hard work and smart planning although
there are some hurdles to overcome.
Speaking about his visit
yesterday, Ambassador Kang said: “Agriculture has always been the backbone of
the Cambodian economy and a safety net for the Cambodian people.”
“As a friend and neighbour,
Australia is building on decades of support for Cambodian agriculture to
respond to the impact of COVID-19. As many Cambodians face hardship and
uncertainty at this time, Australia is proud to play a role in supporting
Cambodia’s food security and its economic resilience,” he added.
The irrigation scheme inspected
in Ta Soung is connected to the Prek Ambil river and uses a single pump station
to transport water through almost 50 kilometres of canals and field channels
directly into farmers’ fields.
Funding for the scheme came from
one of Australia Aid’s signature funding initiatives called the Australia
Agricultural Value Chain Program (CAVAC).
CAVAC’s stated goals are to
increase productivity and incomes for smallholder farmers in Cambodia through
working in partnerships with the government and private sector and using a
market systems approach to spread knowledge about new agricultural techniques.
According to the Australian
Embassy, before the scheme was built in 2017, most of the farming households in
Ta Soung could only grow one rice crop each year, using the receding waters
from the annual flood.
However, farmers are now able to
produce two or three crops each year, more than doubling their agricultural
income. While water costs have reduced almost threefold, and average rice
yields have grown from 4 to 5.5 tonnes per hectare.
CAVAC has expanded construction
to 10 schemes located in Takeo, Prey Veng, and Kandal provinces since 2016.
Collectively, the scheme is now
able to irrigate 9,000 additional hectares each year and have doubled rice
production, representing about $10 million of additional income for farmers
annually.
CAVAC also works with Provincial
Departments of Water Resources and Meteorology to establish and train Farmer
Water User Communities (FWUCs) to take responsibility for managing the scheme
when operations begin.
In addition to sustainable
irrigation services, CAVAC is supporting agricultural mechanisation,
encouraging the use of better-quality seed and appropriate inputs, and
promoting investment in higher-value crops and agro-processing.
These strategies – implemented
with both the government and the private sector – are key to the modernisation
of Cambodian agriculture which will support economic resilience in the face of
COVID-19 challenges.
Sakhon has previously stated that
Cambodia is looking to reach one million tonnes of milled rice exports set in
2015 due to high demand from the international market during COVID-19.
He said according to the
first-quarter results, which increased more than 40 percent compared with the
same period last year, exports for 2020 could reach the goal as set by the
government five years ago.
Amru Rice (Cambodia), one of the
country’s leading rice exporters, has scaled up its BlocRice technology project
to 500 households in two communities in Preah Vihear province.
BlocRice project phase I had 50
household farmers in one agricultural community in Preah Vihear province. The
project, a first in the Kingdom because of its usage of blockchain technology,
was launched in April 2018 as a pilot programme that ended in March 2019. Its
goal is to ensure farmers can sell their products at a higher price and it also
enables the source of food to be identified.
The BlocRice pilot involved
relevant actors in the rice supply chain with 50 farmers from the Reaksmei
cooperative, rice exporter AmruRice, rice-cake producer SanoRice and Oxam
Novib and Schullelaar & Partners.
After a successful pilot,
demonstrating the use case and providing farmers with a digital identity, the
partners decided to upscale the project to a commercially viable level,
involving more farmers and providing a direct link with consumers.
The first phase was also involved
in the research phase determining the living income benchmark and good
agriculture practices plus technological needs. The project also monitors the
progress of rice farmers towards a living income; improves farm income from
rice and from other sources as a result of technical assistance and extension
services; reduces operational costs through farmers’ cooperatives and gives
farmers a digital identity and voice in the supply chain as well as increasing
transparency in the supply chain. Retailers and consumers have real-time
insight in the rice supply chain for enhanced social auditing.
“Let’s talk about agri-tech and
how financial technology could be part of it. A lot of people are talking about
Blockchain, big data, the internet of things (IOT), the Industrial Revolution
4.0, Smart Agriculture etc. Here we make things work by utilising Blockchain
technology. It is called BlocRice phase II,” said Kann Kunthy, vice-president
of Amru Rice (Cambodia).
BlocRice mainly focuses on trust,
transparency and traceability. Kunthy added that in phase I, the team piloted
with one agricultural cooperative (AC) with 50 households and now it is scaling
up to two ACs with 500 households.
“Our goal is to utilise
Blockchain technology for millions of households not only in rice but all
agricultural crops. Local tech firms or individuals with block chain knowledge
and expertise would be part of the future (localisation),” Kunthy said, adding
that it is only possible if farmers and ACs are organised and integrated,
turning them from seasonal farmers to commercial and professional farmers who
are market-oriented.
“The digital infrastructure can
only perform given that the physical infrastructure can support [be it
logistics, transportation, post-harvest management, storage and delivery],”
Kunthy added. “The ultimate goal is to train and educate ACs to become
‘agri-preneurs’.”
Prime Minister Hun Sen told
farmers in Prey Kabbas district, Takeo province, yesterday that the agriculture
sector must be aligned with the Industrial Development Policy 2015-2025 is to
attract more foreign investment to work on processing in Cambodia.
He said that Cambodia has put a
strong effort into the building of silos, warehouses and rice milling
machinery. He added that Cambodia will take $400 million from China to build
warehouses for paddy across the country. He is also considering lowering the
electricity tariff for farmers and the agriculture sector in general and also
building more physical infrastructure to support farmers.
BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand’s
rice exporters association has slashed its forecast for 2020 exports to 6.5
million tonnes, the lowest volume in two decades, owing to drought and a strong
baht currency, its executives said on Wednesday.
FILE PHOTO: FILE PHOTO: Immigrant workers unload sacks of rice
from a barge to a cargo ship on the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok August 27,
2014. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha/File Photo
The industry group’s latest
forecast for Thailand, the world’s second-largest rice exporter last year, is
lower than its previous expectation of a seven-year low of 7.5 million tonnes
for 2020.
The association attributed that
to a persistently strong baht compared to other currencies and drought cutting
Thai rice output by 5 million tonnes this production season, making prices
higher and uncompetitive.
“The new forecast of 6.5 million
tonnes is the lowest volume in 20 years,” said Chookiat Ophaswongse, honorary
president of the Thai Rice Exporters Association, adding the previous low was
6.15 million tonnes in 2000.
“This year will be a struggle.”
From January to June, Thailand
exported 3.14 million tonnes of rice, about a third less than the same period
last year, the association’s data showed, less than India’s 4.53 million tonnes
and the 4.04 million tonnes shipped by Vietnam.
Thailand’s gains from India
halting logistics during lockdown and Vietnam temporarily banning new contracts
to ensure domestic supply amid the coronavirus crisis would be shortlived, and
balanced out by flat demand, Charoen Laothamatas, the association’s president.
“COVID-19 has made the market
volatile, making importers buy more than usual earlier to stock up, but now
they won’t need to for a while,” he said.
Sales of Thai premium-grade
jasmine rice have risen by 63% this year, benefiting from panic-buying in
wealthier markets like Singapore, Hong Kong, the United States and Canada.
Meanwhile, lower purchasing power
globally has seen Thai white rice lose out to cheaper grades offered by Vietnam
in key Asian markets like the Philippines.
China, once a Thai rice importer,
was also beating Thailand in key African markets with cheaper prices.
Reporting by Patpicha
Tanakasempipat; Editing by Ed Davies and Martin Petty
Prime Minister Hun Sen said
Tuesday that he has ordered 2,000 rice sowing machines from local processing
firms to boost paddy rice production in the country.
During his visit to Prey Kabas
district of Takeo province to learn about the country’s agricultural progress,
Mr Hun Sen underlined that the order is part of the government’s commitment to
further promote local agricultural productivity.
The Premier ordered to buy 1,000
each of big and small rice sowing machines. The big rice sowing machines cost
$1,300 each, while the small ones $1,100 each.
According to the premier, each of
the 135 households who had a get-together with him this morning will receive a
small one, and the rest, both big and small machines, will be handed over to
target farmers and communities.
The Royal Government of Cambodia
has been paying high attention to the agriculture productivity amid the
COVID-19 crisis.
This is the second time that the Prime Minister visited Prey
Kabas district where he spent his time to do rice farming with local
farmers. Heng Phanna – AKP
Land rights
battle inches Kenyan rice farmers closer to title deeds
Kagondu Njagi
JULY 22, 2020 / 8:12 AM
NGURUBANI, Kenya (Thomson Reuters
Foundation) - When Wilson Kariuki’s three younger children finish high school,
the Kenyan rice farmer will not have to worry about paying to send them to a
university far from home, as he did with his two eldest.
Instead, they can attend a new
university being built in their home village of Ngurubani, central Kenya, on
100 acres (40 hectares) that the farmers on the Mwea Irrigation Scheme now own
after winning a case against the county government in April.
The rice farmers’ victory is a sign
of the rising awareness of land rights that is driving small-scale farmers
around Kenya to demand ownership of the land they live and work on, farmers and
land rights activists say.
“This land will benefit our
children,” said Kariuki, 55. “When they study at a university which is based
here, they will help our community solve problems which have been troubling us
for years - like the issue of land rights.”
The farmers had donated portions of
their farmland in 2017 for the construction of a medical research centre to
study water-borne diseases, Kariuki explained.
But the project stalled when
Kirinyaga County officials presented the farmers with a title deed that claimed
the land as government property.
After lobbying by farmers, local
leaders and grassroots groups, the National Land Commission (NLC), an
independent government body that manages public land, declared the county
government’s title illegal and issued a new one to the farmers.
But the battle is not over yet, said
Kariuki. He and the more than 50,000 farmers on the irrigation scheme now want
the national government to issue them with title deeds to their individual
plots of land.
With land titles, the farmers would
have autonomy from the National Irrigation Authority (NIA), which manages the
plantation and dictates what the farmers can grow, how much they produce and
what they sell it for.
“Title deeds will help farmers make
decisions over their land,” said Stephen Mururia, a human rights defender with
the Mwea Foundation, a local lobby group.
“For instance, they can decide to
switch from rice growing to a more profitable crop,” he told the Thomson
Reuters Foundation.
Previous efforts to convince the
government to give the farmers individual title deeds - through meetings with
officials and demands from local leaders - always end with promises that are
never met, Kariuki said.
Daniel Nzonzo, head of corporate
communication at the NIA, said in a phone interview that “the issue of rice
farmers getting title deeds is being considered by the government through the
NLC.”
“This matter is already with the
Senate, who will debate it,” he added, without giving a timeline for when the
debate might take place.
GAINING CONTROL
Located some 100 kilometres (60
miles) northeast of the capital Nairobi, the 30,050-acre (12,160-hectare) Mwea
plantation is the largest rice-growing irrigation scheme in Kenya, with a
population of about 50,000.
It produces about 90,000 tonnes of
rice each year, or 80% of the country’s rice supply, according to the National
Irrigation Authority.
Each farming family in Mwea has the
right to live and work on up to four acres (1.6 hectares) of land under a
99-year leasehold that started when the plantation was established in 1954,
according to independent land rights researcher Gladys Gichobi.
As the farmers continue their
efforts to gain legal ownership of that land, they can look to cases of
small-scale farmers in other parts of Kenya who have successfully pushed for
title deeds to land they lived and worked on for decades.
Since 2013, as a result of years of
lobbying, Kenya’s government has given title deeds to more than 60,000 farmers
along the country’s coast.
And in January, officials promised
to issue another 500,000 titles around the country by the end of the year.
When they announced the initiative,
authorities said priority would go to marginalised communities - a group that
includes the Mwea farmers - and Kenyans who have suffered historical land
injustices.
NO COLLATERAL, NO LOANS
Until they get title deeds, the
farmers have limited resources to invest in their own land or get bank loans,
said Anthony Mwai, another farmer on the plantation.
As a solution, some farmers’ groups
band together to bypass banks and get uncollateralised loans from microfinance
lenders and savings and credit cooperatives to help them boost their output.
However, that method is often
unsustainable, Mwai added, because many farmers struggle to pay back their
loans due to the low prices they get for their rice, which are set by the NIA.
Farmers sometimes have to sell their
rice for as little as 45 Kenyan shillings (about 40 cents) per kilogramme, said
the 49-year-old farmer.
But it costs double that amount just
to grow and harvest a kilogramme of rice, continued Mwai, who is currently
paying back a loan he got as a member of the local Mwea savings and credit
cooperative
“With such poor prices, farmers
cannot even break even. So, will I use the money to repay a loan or will I feed
my family first?,” he wondered aloud.
In a media briefing in February, NIA
officials said they had raised the selling price of rice to 85 Kenyan shillings
(80 cents) per kilogramme to help farmers meet the rising cost of production.
‘I LIVE AS A SQUATTER’
Data from the NLC shows that less
than a fifth of Kenyans own more than 1.5 acres (0.60 hectares) of land, while
nearly 15% own no land at all.
Gichobi, the land rights activist,
said she and other local activists have been spreading the word about the
importance of owning a land title deed and teaching farmers how to represent
their cases to land authorities.
“Farmers want title deeds,” Gichobi
said. “Because they now know having one will not only solve land problems here,
but it will also accelerate economic growth.”
Mururia of the Mwea Foundation, one
of the groups that helped the plantation’s farmers win their case, said his
group spreads awareness on land rights through meetings hosted by village
chiefs, at local football games and women’s groups.
While the farmers wait to one day
make their own decisions on how they farm, Julius Muchiri said he and other
Mwea farmers have to hire land from neighbouring farms in the hopes of growing
enough to pay off their loans and feed their families.
“Look at me. I am an old man with
nothing. I still live as a squatter,” Muchiri lamented.
“If the government would give me a
title deed for even half an acre of land, I would be very happy.”
Reporting by Kagondu Njagi, Editing
by Jumana Farouky and Zoe Tabary. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation,
the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives of people around
the world who struggle to live freely or fairly. Visit http://news.trust.org
Researchers from The Pennsylvania State University used CRISPR-Cas9 to perform single-nucleotide editing
in rice without introducing a double-strand break. The results are published
in aBiotechjournal.
Scientist Kubuddin Molla and colleagues used
CRISPR-Cas9-mediated adenine base editors (ABEs) to generate precise point
mutations in two rice genes, OsWSL5, and OsZEBRA3,
which play roles in rice chloroplast development. The methodology led to
precisely engineered point mutations that were stably inherited to the
succeeding generations. The single-nucleotide alterations led to single amino
acid changes and the linked wsl5 and z3 phenotypes,
which were manifested by white stripe leaf and light green/dark green leaf
pattern, respectively. By selfing and genetic segregation breeding techniques,
transgene-free, base edited wsl5 and z3 mutants
were attained in a short span of time.
The results of the study show that the methods used could lead
to point mutations in multiple target genes in a single transformation and
serve as a useful base editing tool for crop improvement.
‘Crop burning contributed nearly 40% of the
near-surface PM2.5 in Delhi in 2016’
Delhi’s meteorology and the
quantity of chaff burnt play a greater role in worsening air quality than the
time chosen by farmers in Punjab to start crop burning, a study argues.
Crop burning, a traditional
practice in Punjab and Haryana of razing fields off rice chaff to prepare it
for winter sowing, begins around October and peaks in November, coinciding with
the withdrawal of southwest monsoon.
Subsidies and assured
procurement of rice has led to a rise in the rice acreage in these States.
Coupled with increased farm mechanisation, large quantities of rice stubble
have increased over the years. However, it has been pointed out that a change
in Punjab’s water policy in 2009, mandated farmers to delay sowing to late June
(to discourage groundwater extraction), led to sowing being delayed by an
average of 10 days compared to 2002-2008.
This, consequently, delayed
harvesting and rice chaff burning. As a result, the pollutants and the
particulate matter from chaff, along with other sources of pollution in Delhi,
which stuck in the lower atmosphere of the Indo-Gangetic plain, exacerbated
winter pollution.
The study, which largely relies
on mathematical modelling and to be published in the peer-reviewed Environment
Research Letters, finds that crop burning contributed nearly 40% of the
near-surface PM2.5 in Delhi in 2016 — a year that saw one of Delhi’s severest
pollution episodes.
However, when data on the number
of crop burning episodes (gleaned from satellite images) and levels of
particulate matter were plugged into a mathematical model, it emerged that crop
residue contribution to particulate matter over Delhi, in 2016, increased only
marginally (1%) when compared to a hypothetical scenario of crops being burned
10 days earlier.
Moreover, early burning while
reducing particulate matter burning by 20g/m3, didn’t reduce the number of days
of significant PM exposure in Delhi, which hovered around 55 days. But the
model showed that delaying rice burning 10 days beyond what is currently
practised could be detrimental and could lead to an increase in peak
particulate matter emissions as well as increase the number of pollution days,
the paper notes.
“[The role of] legislation
appears to be minimal, and indeed can sometimes decrease as well increase air
quality problems depending on the meteorological conditions of the time,” the
authors note. They consist of scientists from the IIT-Kanpur; The University of
Leicester, The Energy Resources Institute, Panjab University and Post Graduate
Institute for Medical Research, Chandigarh.
“Ultimately, the halting of crop
residue burning would greatly aid the newly established National Clean Air
Programme [NCAP], which aims to reduce emissions from various sectors including
agricultural residue burning,” the authors note. The NCAP proposes to reduce
pollution by 20-30% in annual PM concentration by 2024.
Thailand risks dropping to No.5
in rice exports over the next decade if the country remains complacent and does
not develop a long-term rice strategy for seeds and competitiveness, warns the
Thai Rice Exporters Association.
Charoen Laothammatas, the
association's president, said on Wednesday Thailand is expected to see a
continuous drop in exports as the country's current rice policy lacks
continuity or a long-term development plan.
Thailand also has a limited
R&D budget for rice, he said.
"The first priority is the
limited budget for R&D of rice seed development, particularly for
soft-textured white rice which is now in high demand in the world market,"
said Mr Charoen.
"Thailand's production costs
are relatively higher than those of competitors, while higher logistics costs
and the strong baht have made Thai rice prices become more expensive than the grains
of competitors."
He said alternating drought and
flood disasters have affected Thailand's rice production and a lack of accurate
data on rice has made it hard to devise effective marketing plans.
"For long-term strategies,
related authorities are being urged to speed up their consideration of the
entire supply chain in the rice industry, be it seed development, rice millers,
paddy rice traders, seed manufacturers and traders, packed rice producers, or
rice exporters," said Mr Charoen.
He said other rice producers such
as China have spent a lot of money on R&D to raise their rice yield.
China's rice yield is now around 2 tonnes per rai, while Vietnam's yield is
around 960 kilogrammes per rai and Thailand's is 450kg per rai.
In a related development, the
association lowered its rice export forecast for 2020 to 6.5 million tonnes,
the lowest in 20 years, from an earlier forecast of 7.5 million tonnes.
It cited a host of negative
factors, including the coronavirus crisis that weakened global demand, a strong
baht that makes Thai rice more expensive, and continued drought cutting into
production.
Thai rice prices are US$30-80 a
tonne higher than those of competitors because of the strong baht, while the
widespread drought has cut the domestic rice supply by 20% or 5 million tonnes
of paddy rice this year.
According to Mr Charoen,
important rice importers such as the Philippines, Malaysia and China favour
soft-textured rice, but Thailand has yet to churn out the soft-textured grains.
This year China's import demand
is expected to decrease given the mainland's relatively high rice stock of 117
million tonnes compared with a normal level 60-70 million tonnes.
China became a net exporter this
year, expected to ship about 3.5-4 million tonnes of rice to Africa.
"Thai rice exports in the
second half this year are expected to slow down, as the Covid-19 outbreak in
April has triggered rising demand and led several countries to beef up their
domestic rice stocks in the first half," he said.
"The new economic team
should think about accelerating Thailand's rice competitiveness development and
reining in the foreign exchange rate at 32.5-33 baht per US dollar."
In the first half of this year,
Thailand shipped 3.14 million tonnes of milled rice, down 32.7% from the same
period last year, with export value down 12% to $2.2 billion.
For the period, Thailand was the
world's third largest rice exporter, trailing India and Vietnam, which shipped
4.53 million tonnes and 4.04 million tonnes, respectively.
Scientists Use CRISPR-Cas9 for Single-nucleotide Editing in Rice
July 22, 2020
2
Researchers from The Pennsylvania State University used CRISPR-Cas9 to perform single-nucleotide editing
in rice without introducing a double-strand break. The results are published
in aBiotech journal.
Scientist Kubuddin Molla and colleagues used CRISPR-Cas9-mediated
adenine base editors (ABEs) to generate precise point mutations in two rice
genes, OsWSL5, and OsZEBRA3, which play
roles in rice chloroplast development. The methodology led to precisely
engineered point mutations that were stably inherited to the succeeding
generations. The single-nucleotide alterations led to single amino acid changes
and the linked wsl5 and z3 phenotypes, which were manifested by white
stripe leaf and light green/dark green leaf pattern, respectively. By selfing
and genetic segregation breeding techniques, transgene-free, base edited wsl5 and z3 mutants were
attained in a short span of time.
The results of the study show that
the methods used could lead to point mutations in multiple target genes in a
single transformation and serve as a useful base editing tool for crop
improvement.
Cameroon
authorizes the duty-free importation of 200,000 tons of rice to build up
reserves
Wednesday, 22 July 2020
13:19
(Business in Cameroon) - To build
its rice reserve and cover the national demand for the rest of 2020, Cameroon
has authorized the duty-free importation of 200,000 tons of rice, according to
a June 5, 2020 correspondence signed by the Minister of Finance (Minfi) Louis
Paul Motaze.
Various importers were assigned a
specific volume to import. For instance, Sonam, which was the leading rice
importer in 2019 (with 226,816 tons imported) is allowed to import 70,000 tons
in this scheme. “I encourage you to pass the fiscal expenditures
that would ensue on the selling price of those products,” Louis
Paul Motaze wrote in a letter addressed to the CEO of Sonam.
In the framework of this measure,
the 200,000 tons of rice imported would thus be exempted from the common
external tariff (CET), which was partially restored to 5% after the customs
duty exoneration of 2008.
A measure contrary to discourse
This decision surprised many
people since the government was promising to implement new strategies aimed at
boosting local production. "Given the decrease in public revenues, the
state’s 2021-2023 economic and financial prospects are mainly tailored around
import-substitution via the reduction or gradual suppression of exemptions on
some products that affect the trade balance- to encourage their local
production on a larger scale,” the Minister of Finance explained
during a special ministerial council on Jul 2, 2020.
According to the budget
orientation document, the country plans to raise the CET from 5% to 10% in
2021. Also, to limit the volume of importations, it proposed to regulate import
finance. It also announced special measures for the legume and starch foods
sectors likely to bridge the gap created by a drop in imports.
The document reveals that in
2019, Cameroon imported 905,107 tons of rice generating CFAF79.1 billion of
fiscal expenditures.
Let’s note that when it comes to
fiscal expenditures, VAT and custom duties exemption on rice imports are the
most onerous for the state. In 2018, they represented 3.5% of the country’s
fiscal revenues.
A stall at the San Andres public market sells assorted varieties
of rice in this Businessmirror file photo.
LIMITED budgets may constrain the
government from surveying rice stocks held by commercial warehouses, which are
owned and run by private traders and importers, according to a Congress
official.
Novel Bangsal of the
Congressional Policy and Budget Research Department (CPBRD) revealed that the
Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) may face challenges in conducting the
commercial rice stocks survey (CSS), partly because of limited funding.
The CSS is a survey of the rice
stocks held by commercial warehouses. Its conduct was turned over to the PSA
from the National Food Authority (NFA) as mandated by the rice trade
liberalization (RTL) law that took effect in 2019.
Under the implementing rules and
regulations (IRR) of the RTL law, the final turnover of the CSS from the NFA to
PSA shall be on July 1. The IRR also stipulated that the budgetary requirement
for conducting the CSS starting this year “shall be provided” in the annual
budget of the PSA.
Citing PSA, Bangsal said a 2020
budget for the PSA’s CSS was approved under the agency’s Tier 2 fund.
However, Bangsal added that
whether the CSS indeed got appropriation for this year would still need to be
verified amid government’s spending for Covid-19 efforts.
“Whether the PSA will be able to
conduct the CSS this year is still something that we need tot verify,” he said
at a webinar about the RTL law hosted by various farmers groups on Wednesday.
Less frequent
Bangsal disclosed that due to
PSA’s “low” budget for 2020 the agency may opt to reduce the frequency of the
CSS from monthly to quarterly basis.
Citing PSA, Bangsal added that
the agency may also just conduct the CSS at a national level instead of the
planned provincial level, again, due to limited funds.
Bangsal also raised concern on
how efficiently PSA can conduct the CSS since the rice industry has been
deregulated and commercial warehouse owners may not easily cooperate unlike
before, when NFA oversaw their licenses.
Bangsal pointed out that the PSA
has yet to come up with a methodology for its CSS and a new methodology would
mean the new rice stocks data could be incomparable to previous figures.
“Because there are changes in
methodology, the new data won’t be comparable in previous stocks data since PSA
does not have a methodology on how to do the CSS yet. This will be a challenge
for the PSA,” he explained.
Federation of Free Farmers (FFF)
National Manager Raul Q. Montemayor said the PSA may also have a hard time
finding the right warehouses to survey since commercial warehouses no longer
need to get a license to store rice.
“The law removed the licensing
requirements for importers. This means that even if you do not have a license
you can import rice. And this could be a challenge for PSA as they will not be
easily able to track where the imported rice went and stored,” Montemayor said
at the webinar.
Based on the latest memorandum
order of the Department of Agriculture, interested rice importers should now
submit as an additional requirement the list of their distribution points and
warehouses.
Study calls for review of nutritional benefits
of food subsidy programmes
Food subsidy programmes are considered a key
component of efforts to combat food insecurity and malnutrition around the
globe, but the study of an Indian programme has raised some concerns.
The nutritional benefit of rice and sugar
distributed by national food subsidy programmes may be limited, new research
has suggested.
India’s main food subsidy programme, the Public
Distribution System (PDS), provides sugar, rice, and wheat to households at
reasonably low costs to improve their nutrition intake and attain food
security.
Although the programme aims to improve
nutritional outcomes through its subsidies, the research team saw no evidence
of improvements when children received subsidised rice and sugar.
Webinar:
Using NMR for brand protection and ensuring supply chain integrity of wine
There is
increasing global demand to establish the authenticity of food
products by demonstrating an unbroken supply chain from the source through to
the final consumers. Assuring authenticity and integrity of wines protects
the brand of a wine manufacturer or distributor, along with reputations
of wine regions or appellations for wine growers and associations. In this
webinar, Gordon Burns, President of ETS Laboratories, begins by introducing the
application of Proton NMR, a direct and highly reproducible technique for wine
analysis.
The
study, ‘Subsidising rice and sugar? The Public Distribution System and
Nutritional Outcomes in Andhra Pradesh India’, was
carried out by a research team from Oxford and Lancaster Universities, the BITS
Pilani in India and Bocconi University in Italy.
In India, 38 percent of children under five
experience long-term malnutrition that impacts their growth, cognition and
psycho-social development and perpetuate a cycle of intergenerational poverty –
compounded by the COVID-19 outbreak and the measures to contain it.
“Importantly, our findings suggest that nutritional
outcomes and food subsidies need to be considered over time rather than as a
snapshot. This is essential for understanding not just the short-term effects
of subsidies, but also the association with long-term nutritional outcomes,”
said Dr Jasmine Fledderjohann, of Lancaster University.
“The subsidised foods available in the PDS may
very well prevent severe malnutrition in the short-term by addressing caloric
deficiencies, but rice and sugar subsidies appear not to improve longer-term
nutritional outcomes,” she explained.
“Our
findings suggest the subsidies should be carefully reviewed. It is possible
that other more nutrient-dense foods could offer greater benefits for improving
nutrition,” said Dr Sukumar Vellakkal of the BITS
Pilani Goa campus.
The study also found that, particularly for
wealthier households, the subsidies encouraged the consumption of less
nutritious foods, with children in households receiving sugar subsidies
snacking on sugary treats.
They also found that boys received more rice
and sugar than girls, which is said to be consistent with broader evidence of
son preference in India.
As countries around the globe struggle to feed
their populations in the midst of record unemployment, food system disruptions,
and social distancing associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, careful
consideration of what items are included in food aid programmes and what the
long-term consequences of specific programs of food provision are is vital, the
researchers said..
7
hours ago Thu 23rd July 2020 | 11:40 AM
Rice
exports during last fiscal year (2019-20) registered about 5.12 percent growth
A stall at the San Andres public market sells assorted varieties
of rice in this Businessmirror file photo.
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