Soggy cereal gives clues to how rock dams
collapse
Cereal ‘ricequakes’ could help scientists predict when bigger
structures will fall
JAN 4, 2019 — 6:45 AM EST
What does your breakfast have to do with a giant dam or a river
of ice? Quite a bit, a new study finds.
I. EINAV AND F. GUILLARD
A bowl of rice cereal might seem
like it has nothing in common with a huge rock dam or an Antarctic ice sheet.
But look a little closer. When puffed rice is poured into milk and pressed
down, liquid creeps into the cereal. The rice then sinks into the liquid with a
large crash. At this point, a slow creep begins again. Those crashes — called
ricequakes — happen at regular, predictable times, a new study finds. And the
snap, crackle and pop of Rice Krispies soaking in milk can help scientists
understand how larger things fall apart, such as huge ice sheets or heaps of
rocks.
Itai Einav works in Australia at
the University of Sydney. Technically, he is an engineer who studies granular
materials. And those can be anything from rocks and sand to flour. But these
days, you might call him a cereal scientist. “I worked for several years on dry
Rice Krispies with a colleague,” he explains.
They did a series of studies,
just looking at how it crushes. And then, they realized, “There was a
connection to rocks.” The patterns that emerge when you crush the cereal, he
says, “are strikingly similar.”
Science with cereal alone will
soon run dry, however. So he and Francois Guillard poured puffed rice cereal
into a tube filled with water or milk. (Puffed rice cereal is called Rice
Krispies in the United States but Rice Bubbles in Australia.) The pair then
added a weight on top. At 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds), that weight was about
as heavy as a very thick book. “We know what happens when you add milk without
pressure; everyone’s done it at home,” Einav says. Pressing down on the cereal
would better imitate a heavy rockfill dam, he and Guillard suspected.
Those dams are large hills of
rocks and dirt. They’re cheap to make because they don’t need concrete or other
expensive materials. Dirt and rocks can be found anywhere. What’s more, these
dams won’t crack — as concrete might — when an earthquake hits. Rockfill dams
are important structures. They hold back water to create big reservoirs.
Controlled spills of water from some of them provide electrical power. Other
dams might keep chemical wastes from mines or other operations from spilling
into the environment.
But unlike dams made of
concrete (like the Hoover Dam), those made from rocks and earth
have holes. Even the most solid rocks have tiny, tiny holes in them, Einav
explains. “Rocks without holes don’t exist.” There are also air pockets between
the rocks and dirt clumps.
This is the inside of a piece of puffed rice. It’s full of holes
that soak up liquid. They will eventually allow the cereal to sink into milk.
I. Einav and F. Guillard
Over time, water can creep into
such air spaces. It soaks upward from the bottom of the dam toward the top
through a process known as capillary action.
The soaked material begins to sink. It can even collapse. In 1998, a rockfill
dam collapsed in Aznalcóllar, Spain. This spilled tons of dangerous mine wastes
into a local river.
Einav and Guillard decided to
build a puffed-rice model that might help them predict when a large rockfill
dam might come crumbling down. They watched their weighted, wet cereal
carefully. They also took video and recorded sounds this cereal produced.
Creep and crash
Rice cereal collapses into liquid
in two distinct, repeating phases, the researchers found. In the “creep” phase,
milk or water soaked upward. It entered into the air holes inside the rice and
between the cereal grains. Meanwhile, the weight that the scientists had placed
on top pressed the dry cereal down from above. This made small crackling noises
as the rice got crushed.
When the downward pressure became
too great, the soaking cereal underwent a ricequake. All at once, the cereal
shifted downward with an audible snapping sound. It was far louder than the
previous crackles.
Hear the snap and crackle, and
the louder pops? This is the two-stage collapse of puffed rice under
pressure. Audio: I.
Einav and F. Guillard
This cycle repeated over and
over. By observing the puffed rice, the scientists were able to predict a
steady pattern.
As cereal sinks into bowl of
milk, those ricequakes occur at longer and longer intervals. The cereal might
appear to smoothly sink into the milk. In fact, the process was really a series
of creeps and crashes, the scientists found. The same thing happens when a
rockfill dam fails, Einay notes. The disaster may seem to happen all at once,
but actually “it’s made of small collapse events.” And those control how
quickly a dam fails, he says.
The new results might apply to
more than rockfill dams. After modeling ricequakes, Einav heard about
“icequakes.” These are masses of ice that shift and slide as melted water soaks
up from below. “They happen twice daily in Antarctica,” Einay says.
He and Guillard compared their
model to a moving stream of ice in Antarctica called the Whillans Ice Stream.
The ice streams, they found, move in very similar ways to their puffed rice and
milk.
“Once we have the model and
equations, we can play with it and imagine what happens” as ice streams shift,
Einav says. The team published its results October 12 in the journal Science
Advances.
Kerstin Nordstrom really likes
their team’s “idea of making a scaled-down model” and tracking the collapses
with sound. She is a physicist at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass.
It’s “a neat way to understand the mechanics going on inside a material when
you can’t see inside it,” she says. Scientists use sound to track earthquakes,
for example.
The math that Einav used to model
sinking cereal could definitely apply to rockfill dams, adds Yida Zhang. He’s
an engineer at the University of Colorado in Boulder who studies such dams.
It’s relatively easy to know if a dam will collapse, he says. When it
will collapse is harder to predict. The humble breakfast cereal might help
people predict such disasters before they happen, he says.
“I’m not trying to save the world
with Rice Krispies,” Einav notes. He’s just passionate about watching material
collapse — whether that’s an ice sheet or a bowl of cereal. He knew some
collapse would happen in his experiment, he says. But finding a regular,
organized series of ricequakes? “It was so glorious and beautiful.”
TEXAS HAS ENOUGH SUN AND WIND
TO QUIT COAL, RICE RESEARCHERS SAY
Texas might have the perfect environment to quit coal for
good.
Solar installations powered as much as 28.5pc of the nation’s
electricity on Sunday May 6th 2018, for 30 minutes
Texas is one of the only places—potentially
in the world—where the natural patterns of wind and sun could produce power
around the clock, according to new research from Rice University.
Scientists found that between
wind energy from West Texas and the Gulf Coast, and solar energy across the
state, Texas could meet a significant portion of its electricity demand from
renewable power without extensive battery storage. The reason: These sources
generate power at different times of day, meaning that coordinating them could
replace production from coal-fired plants.
“There is nowhere else in the
world better positioned to operate without coal than Texas is,” said Dan Cohan
an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice
University who co-authored the report with a student, Joanna Slusarewicz. “Wind
and solar are easily capable of picking up the slack.”
--
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IRRI opens new center in India
01.04.2019
VARANASI, INDIA — The International
Rice Research Institute (IRRI) opened the IRRI South Asia Regional Center (IRRI
SARC) with Prime Minister of India Shri Narendra Modi inaugurating the event.
The research facility will work to
strengthen the national research capacity of rice growing countries in South
Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
“This is a landmark moment for
India and IRRI,” said Matthew Morell, director general of the IRRI. “This
state-of-the-art rice research center will catalyze South-South collaboration,
strengthen the research expertise and capacity of rice growing countries in the
region, and contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals. It is only through
the support of our network of global partners, such as the government of India,
that knowledge and innovations gained at this center can be speedily tailored
to meet needs of farmers in India, across South Asia and across Africa.”
Prime Minister Modi took a tour of
the laboratories of the IRRI SARC, interacting with the scientists of the institute.
IRRI SARC facilities include the
Center of Excellence in Rice Value Addition (CERVA), a suite of modern
laboratories where rice grains are assessed for quality and nutritional value
and sensory evaluations for grain taste, texture, and aroma are conducted;
on-site facilities.
The education and training arm of
IRRI SARC, IRRI Education, will teach scientists and agriculture leaders about
the latest technologies and innovations for sustainable farming; and
laboratories for digital crop monitoring and assessment, and demonstration
fields where variety testing is conducted.
Other inauguration attendees were
Hon’ble Governor of Uttar Pradesh, Shri Ram Naik; Chief Minister for Uttar
Pradesh Shri Yogi Adityanath; Minister of Communications and Minister of State
for Railways, Shri Manoj Sinha; Agriculture Minister for Uttar Pradesh Shri
Surya Pratap Shahi, Member of Parliament (Chandauli) Shri Mahendra Nath Pandey;
Secretary for Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare Shri
Sanjay Agarwal; Principal Secretary Agriculture, Uttar Pradesh Shri Amit Mohan
Prasad and Joint Secretary (Seeds), Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers
Welfare Shri Ashwani Kumar. Representatives from the South Asian Association
for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and other key donors and partner organizations
were also in attendance.
Scientists Fix a Crucial Photosynthesis
'Glitch', Boosting Crop Growth by 40%
MIKE
MCRAE
4
JAN 2019
Scientists have fixed a natural flaw in photosynthesis, and as a
result have boosted plant productivity by an incredible 40 percent compared to
wild relatives.
Photosynthesis is the chemical
reaction that lets plants turn sunlight and carbon dioxide into food, and this
new hack could result in enough calories to help feed another 200 million people
on our planet, from the same volume of crops.
As of now, the fix has only been
applied to tobacco plants, so we're a long way off using this to boost our food
supply. But it's an incredibly promising first step.
So what is this 'glitch' that
needed fixing? It's a little-known step in photosynthesis known as
photorespiration.
"We could feed up to 200
million additional people with the calories lost to photorespiration in the
Midwestern US each year," says principal
investigator Donald Ort from the University of Illinois Carl R.
Woese Institute for Genomic Biology.
"Reclaiming even a portion
of these calories across the world would go a long way to meeting the 21st
century's rapidly expanding food demands."
To understand what goes wrong,
you need to understand a little about the haphazard process of evolution. In
the immortal words of Dr Ian Malcolm in the sci-fi classic Jurassic
Park, "Life finds a way". What he didn't say is
sometimes that way is an inefficient hot mess.
To be fair, evolution does what
it can under the circumstances. Like a grad student keeping one eye on summer
break, it does just enough to pass. Anything more is a wasted effort, after
all.
For many plants, including rice
and soybeans, when it comes to photosynthesis, it's a bare pass. We're talking
a begrudging C-.
One of the most clumsy parts is a
key step involving the enzyme ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase-oxygenase
(RuBisCO), which wedges a carbon dioxide onto the compound ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate
(RuBP).
Roughly 20 percent of the time,
RuBisCO mistakes oxygen for the all-important carbon dioxide molecule.(Fun
fact: RuBisCO is widely regarded as the most abundant protein on the
planet)
Not only is this a wasted
opportunity, the result of this glitch reaction is glycolate and ammonia – two
toxic compounds that need to be swiftly dealt with before they cause too much
damage.
Fortunately plants have evolved a
way to rid themselves of this poison, called photorespiration. They don't
mind spending a portion of their energy on this vital recycling process if it
helps them survive.
But when it comes to growing them
as a food source, we certainly do.
"It costs the plant precious
energy and resources that it could have invested in photosynthesis to produce
more growth and yield," says lead author and
molecular biologist Paul South with the US Department of Agriculture
Agricultural Research Service.
Rice, wheat, and soybeans all
suffer from this need to clear out toxic buildup. Not only do they happen to be
three of the four crops our world's population relies on for most our calories,
we can expect their yield to
drop in the future thanks to global warming.
"RuBisCO has even more
trouble picking out carbon dioxide from oxygen as it gets hotter, causing more
photorespiration," says co-author Amanda
Cavanagh from the University of Illinois.
There have been numerous efforts
over the years to find ways to force crop plants into avoiding the need to
detox.
Many have involved finding the
most efficient photorespiration approaches taken by other organisms, including
various algae and bacteria.
This latest effort is called
Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE), and its approach was to select genes from
elsewhere and test them out.
A handful came from the
bacterium E. coli's glycolate oxidation
pathway. A second version used a gene for catalase also from E. coli,
and some for a glycolate oxidase and malate synthase from plants.
Subject number three used a plant
malate synthase gene and a green algal gene for glycolate dehydrogenase.
These were used in conjunction
with other genetic tweaks to find the most energy efficient pathway among 17
different constructs.
The third photorespiration
pathway was the one that stood out from the rest in final results, with
metabolic activity surging more than 40 percent compared with controls. This
gained energy translates into bigger yields.
It remains to be seen whether
these same efficiency boosts will be translated to other crops, but the
researchers are working on it.
Life doesn't always find a way.
But if we're to get food to where it's needed in the future, science will have
to.
This research was published
in Science.
Genetically modified 'shortcut' boosts plant
growth by 40%
·
3
January 2019 
Image copyrightBRIAN STAUFFERImage captionThese genetically modified tobacco plants were found to be 40%
more productive
Image copyrightBRIAN STAUFFERImage captionThese genetically modified tobacco plants were found to be 40%
more productive
The researchers say they have found a way of overcoming natural
restrictions in the process of photosynthesis that limit crop productivity.
They believe the method could be used to significantly boost yields
from important crops including rice and wheat.
The study has been published in
the journal Science.
Researchers are growing increasingly concerned about the ability
of the world to feed a growing population in a time of serious climate change.
It's expected that agricultural demand will increase globally by
60-120% by the middle of this century compared to 2005. Increases in crop
yields however are rising by less that 2% per annum, so there's likely to be a
significant shortfall by 2050.
While the use of fertilisers, pesticides and mechanisation have
boosted yields over the past few decades, their potential for future growth is
limited.
Instead, scientists are increasingly looking to improving the
process of photosynthesis as a way of increasing food productivity.
Image copyrightJAMES BALTZ/COLLEGE OF
AGRICULTURALImage captionAerial view of the 2017 field trials. Researchers found that
plants engineered with a synthetic shortcut are about 40% more productive.
While plants use the energy from sunlight to turn carbon dioxide
and water into sugars that fuel the plant's growth, the chemical steps involved
produce some toxic compounds that actually limit the potential of the crop.
These toxins are then recycled by the plant in a process called
photorespiration - but this costs the plant precious energy that could have
been used to increase yield.
In this study, researchers set out to developed a way around the
photosynthesis glitch.
"We've tried three different biochemical designs with the
aim of shortcutting this very energy expensive process," said lead author
Dr Paul South with the US Agricultural Research Service.
"It's been estimated that in plants like soybeans, rice and
fruit and vegetables, it can be a significant drag on yield by as much as 36%.
We've tried to engineer this shortcut to make them more energy efficient - and
in field trials this translated into a 40% increase in plant biomass."
One important aspect of the problem is that it becomes more
prevalent at higher temperatures and under drought conditions.
"Our goal is to build better
plants that can take the heat today and in the future, to help equip farmers
with the technology they need to feed the world," said co-author Amanda
Cavanagh, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois.
The researchers chose tobacco plants because they are easy and
quick to modify. They also form a fully closed canopy in the field similar to
many food crops.
The team is now hoping to use these findings to boost the yields
of soybean, rice, potato and tomato plants.
Image copyrightL. BRIAN STAUFFERImage captionThe
experiment is significant say researchers because it involved two years of of
field trials
"This process is very similar among all the crops that we
are looking to grow," said Dr South.
"We are are really hoping that this is a technology that
provides a tool that further optimises agriculture so that we are not using
outside inputs as much and we are growing more food on less land."
However, the authors recognise that using genetic modification
is controversial in many parts of the world.
They argue that a lengthy review process will ensure that if
food crops are developed using this technology, they will be accepted by
farmers and consumers alike.
"The research that's necessary to prove that it has low
environmental impact and is safe for consumption takes a minimum of ten years
and many more dollars in research funds to make sure that this is a good and
safe food product," said Dr South.
The technology is being developed for royalty-free distribution
to smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and in Southeast Asia.
It is being funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research and the UK's Department for
International Development.
Follow Matt on Twitter @mattmcgrathbbc.
Scientists Tout New Way to Boost Photosynthesis
(CN) – A study released Thursday offers a
glimmer of hope for more efficient crops that can better fill up on warm
sunlight and grow bigger and healthier.Plant photosynthesis is at the center of
the study, published in the journal
Science, helmed by researchers from the University of Illinois and U.S.
Department of Agriculture who say they have engineered a bio-shortcut for
plants to become 40 percent more efficient in gathering sunlight and converting
that into energy.
An
unmodified plant (right) grows beside a modified plant (left) engineered with
an alternate route to shortcut photorespiration—a circuitous and
energy-expensive process that costs yield potential. The modified plants are
able to reinvest their energy and resources to significantly boost
productivity. (Photo credit: Claire Benjamin/RIPE Project)
Researchers say this could potentially feed up to 200 million
more people from the amount of energy that is otherwise lost when plants are
taxed and use energy-expensive means to gather nutrients from the sun.
This anti-photosynthesis process can be engineered out of plants
by introducing new pathways to help plants better turn carbon dioxide and water
into sugars that make them grow.
Over a two-year period, researchers stress-tested this process
on 1,700 tobacco plants, which grew faster, taller and produced about 40
percent more biomass.
“Reclaiming even a portion of these calories across the world
would go a long way to meeting the 21st Century’s rapidly expanding food
demands – driven by population growth and more affluent high-calorie diets,”
said Donald Ort, the Robert Emerson professor of plant science and crop
sciences at the University of Illinois.
The team will next apply the process to soybean, cowpea, rice,
potato, tomato, and eggplant crops, but don’t expect to see any of these
results in the produce aisle anytime soon as it will take at least a decade for
the technology to become common practice.
Meanwhile, in another study on light and heat
published Thursday in the journal Science, physicists from Rice University in
Texas have created the world’s first laser-cooled neutral plasma. It’s no small
feat, as the team used laser cooling on clouds of rapidly expanding ions to
temperatures about 50 times colder than deep space.
Plasmas tend to naturally occur in very hot places, like the
surface of the sun or in a lightning bolt, but in order to study the matter,
scientists had to cool, slow and trap particles with intersecting laser beams.
This allows physicists to study coupled plasmas outside of where
they naturally occur, like at the center of Jupiter or in white dwarf stars due
to their intense gravity-squeezing of ions.
Lead scientist Tom Killian, professor of physics and astronomy
at Rice, said his team is not aware of the practical payoff at this point, but
the work allows for the study of exotic states of matter.
“Nobody predicted that laser cooling atoms and ions would lead
to the world’s most accurate clocks or breakthroughs in quantum computing. We
do this because it’s a frontier,” said Killian.
The research was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific
Research and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science.
Science
for Society
PM Modi’s vision is to promote ‘ease of living’
through ‘ease of doing science’
Written by Vijay
Chauthaiwale |Updated: January 4, 2019 12:05:18 am
The address was a clarion call to
the scientific community and provided a new whiff of inspiration to the
millions of Indians interested in science. (Source: PTI/File)
At the 102nd Indian Science Congress
held in Mumbai in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “To me, the arms of
science, technology and innovation must reach the poorest, the remotest and the
most vulnerable person.” It was an address that clearly articulated Modi’s
vision of charting a path for the pragmatic use of science and technology to
aid growth and development in India. The address was a clarion call to the
scientific community and provided a new whiff of inspiration to the millions of
Indians interested in science.
This vision of the prime minister
has improving “Ease of Living” for ordinary citizens at its core. It was an
attempt at motivating scientists and researchers to direct their focus towards
resolving the issues that disrupt the life of the common man.
The transformation in the last
four-and-half years has been remarkable. From engaging with Nobel laureates to
brainstorming with India’s scientific community, from interacting with young
minds engaged in Hackathons to posing questions for innovators and startup
founders, the PM has made science the fulcrum of New India.
This, of course, was no simple task,
especially in a country where institutions work in silos, where there are no
connecting links between scientists and common citizens, and where research
institutes are not qualitatively geared to deal with the requirements of 125
crore Indians. The issues faced by common citizens are complex and the
solutions to them require an inter-disciplinary approach. In the last four
years, the government has tried to enhance collaboration between various
scientific streams to enhance the productivity of our research and development.
Government procedures and approvals
for scientists and researchers have been placed online and made transparent,
thereby assuring “Ease of Doing Science”. Our young scientists now spend more
time dealing with the mysteries of science, than on government procedures. Various
schemes have been introduced to improve the quality of research institutes, for
the promotion of technology business incubators (Atal Incubation Centres) and
research parks that promote innovative ideas until they become commercial
ventures. This has opened up new opportunities for tech start-ups, propelling
India to become the world’s third-largest technology start-up hub with the
incorporation of 1,000 new companies in 2017.
The popularisation of science has
been given a strong impetus. Platforms like “Innovate India” promote and
recognise innovations happening across the nation by enabling citizens to share
their innovation. Atal Tinkering Labs ensure that dedicated workspaces are
created for students to innovate and develop ideas that will go on to transform
India.
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Scholarship schemes have been
revamped and new schemes introduced to inspire young researchers and students
to become active members of India’s growth story. The Nobel Prize Series is now
being hosted in India. This event is seen as a celebration of science and
education. It consists of an exhibition from the Nobel Museum and Nobel
dialogues in which Nobel laureates interact with school children and teachers.
Prime Minister Modi also
intelligently used his international visits to explore collaborations in
various fields like clean energy, agriculture, fintech, biotechnology,
medicine, healthcare and futuristic technologies, such as AI and Blockchain. India’s
partnership with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Philippines
was strengthened further with IRRI opening a regional centre in Varanasi.
India’s collaboration with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave
Observatory (LIGO) in the US improved with our scientists participating in LIGO
experiments. Similarly, India’s quest for clean energy was cemented with our
instrumental role in forging the International Solar Alliance. The quantum leap
of 21 places in the Global Innovation Index in two years, has also been noticed
by the international community.
Science is a continuous journey. The
Fourth Industrial Revolution, comprising of artificial intelligence, machine
learning and smart robotics will create multiple opportunities for Indian scientists
to create new tools that are relevant to India and are environmentally
sustainable. Ease of Doing Science will indeed be the cornerstone of Ease of
Living. As more bright youngsters take to science, they shall endeavour to find
solutions in areas such as nutrition, agriculture, clean energy and the
environment. The results shall certainly augur well for India.
Tunde Bakare Knocked For
Saying Nigeria Not Importing Rice Under Buhari
Pastor Tunde Bakare
161
General Overseer of the Latter
Rain Assembly, Pastor Tunde Bakare, has been criticized for stating that
Nigeria has not imported rice for the past three years.
Bakare, in a recent interview,
had also claimed that President Muhammadu Buhari did not appoint ministers for
six months because there was no money from previous administration to pay them.
“We are no longer importing rice
for three years that is an incredible achievement by Buhari’s government,
seventeen local government occupied by Boko Haram no longer an issue,” Bakare
had said.
But reacting, former aide to
ex-president Goodluck Jonathan, Reno Omokri on his Twitter page described the
claims as lies.
He wrote: “Pastor Tunde Bakare
should stop LYING that Nigeria under Buhari no longer imports rice. According
to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), rice imports have
increased 60% under Buhari and we will be the world’s 2nd largest importer in
2019.
“Pastor Tunde Bakare should stop
LYING that Buhari met an “empty treasury”. Jonathan handed over $2.07 billion
in the Excess Crude Account, $29. 6 billion Foreign Reserve and $5.2 billion in
NLNG dividends for the Buhari govt. Is that ‘empty treasury’?
“Pastor Tunde Bakare should stop
LYING that Buhari has cleared Boko Haram from “seventeen local governments” in
Borno. As Bakare was granting that interview, Baga, Doron-Baga, Kross Kawwa,
Bunduran, Kekeno and Kukawa towns are under Boko Haram/ISWAP control.”
Agriculture trade deficit widens amid rice, fish
imports
January 4, 2019 | 12:01 am
A fish stall vendor prepares a receipt in Farmers Market in
Quezon City on Sept. 5, 2018. -- REUTERS
By Lourdes O. Pilar
Researcher
Researcher
THE trade deficit in agriculture
commodities widened in the third quarter as agriculture exports fell while
imports grew sharply, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said.
The PSA said the Philippines
shipped out $1.687 billion worth of agricultural goods in the three months to
September, down 4.34% from a year earlier.
Meanwhile, imports of farm
products rose 15.48% to $3.536 billion.
As a result, the third-quarter
deficit in agricultural commodities was $1.850 billion, up 42.38% from a year
earlier.
The agriculture sector accounted
for 10.79% or $5.223 billion of total trade worth $48.397 billion in the third
quarter.
“The latest increase in the
country’s foreign trade in agriculture may be partly attributed to increased
imports of rice and other agricultural commodities (after experiencing some
local supply shortages in cheaper NFA rice, sugar), as part of the government’s
non-monetary measures to improve the local supply of rice, fish, sugar, and
other food/agricultural products, in an effort by the government to lower
rice/food prices in the local market and better manage the country’s overall
inflation,” said Michael L. Ricafort, economist from the Rizal Commercial
Banking Corp. (RCBC).
“A bigger agriculture trade
deficit for the country, especially due to increased importation of
rice/cereals, sugar, fish, other food/agricultural products, is primarily meant
to augment local supply to address some shortages of cheaper varieties of rice
and other food items and lower prices/inflation, as part of the government’s
non-monetary measures to better manage inflation,” Mr. Ricafort added.
Ruben Carlo O. Asuncion, chief
economist at Union Bank of the Philippines (UnionBank), said: “This increase
[in total agricultural trade] can be attributed to the uptick in imports to
address supply issues particularly rice and other basic food products, and,
consequently, address heightened price levels in the last 10 months of 2018.”
Dhaka
consumers greeted with rice price shock, farmers with good news in New Year
Published: 05 Jan 2019 05:01 BdST Updated: 05 Jan 2019 05:01 BdST
·
Wholesale prices
of all varieties of rice have gone up by at least Tk 2 per kg, making the
staple costlier in the retail market
as well in Dhaka in the beginning of the new year.
The traders see a good sign for
the farmers in the price spike as the price of paddy increased by over Tk 100
per maund (1 maund = 37.3242 kg) by the end of last year.
Wholesalers in the capital say
the millers halted supply citing a ban on transport during the parliamentary
elections held on Dec 30 which they also blame for the price hike.
One of them, Md Mohiuddin in Mirpur told bdnews24.com on Friday that the prices of all
varieties of rice increased by Tk 2 to Tk 3 per kg in past five days.
The price of low grade Paijam,
Lata and BR Atash rose to Tk 1,750 from Tk 1,650 per sack of 50 kg on an
average, medium grade Miniket to Tk 2,350 from Tk 2,250 and high quality
Miniket rice to Tk 2,550 from Tk 2,450 per sack, according to the
wholesaler.
Retailer Md Palash at Pirerbagh
said he was selling Miniket at Tk 54 per kg, BR Atash at Tk 40 and Paijam at Tk
39 a kg.
The fine variety of flavoured
rice can be had for Tk 3,950 per sack of 50 kg, up Tk 150 from the price before
the vote.
Traders at North Badda rice
market gave a similar account.
“But the farmers are making
profits as paddy prices have also increased,” said Tarique Anam, a sales
manager at Rashid Rice Agency.
He said the millers produce
Miniket rice generally from the Boro harvest. The price of paddy used for
Miniket rose to Tk 1,120 per maund from Tk 1,000.
The government procurement of rice at Tk 36 per kg from the
farmers drove the paddy market up as well, Naogaon Rice Mill Owners Association
President Rafiqul Islam told bdnews24.com.
“It has pushed the prices a
little at the mills,” he added.
He believes the prices will
remain the same for some days.
Rice prices skyrocketed for the
last time for months from mid-2017 after devastating floods at the low-lying
backswamps.
Government data often lower than
market prices, showed a 47 percent rise in the price of coarse rice while a
fine variety saw around 20 percent increase in a year at the time. Coarse rice
consumed by people with low income was then being sold at a minimum of Tk 46
per kg.
Turning Bio-Waste to a Bio-Economy in the
Ayeyarwady Delta
GGGIs Principle Investment Officer Tero Raassina presenting on
rice husk energy opportunities.
- In November 2018, a team of
GGGI investment and bio-economy specialists have been travelling around the
Ayeyarwady Delta and meeting members from national and regional government,
NGOs, farming associations, businesses and communities to scope potential
bio-economy commodities and investments that will enable socially inclusive
green growth, and support national goals of climate change mitigation and
adaptation in coastal areas.
In a series of workshops and site
visits, GGGI facilitated discussions on the range of current value chain
activities in the region to assess what key stakeholders see as the barriers to
developing or scaling up these activities. One such value chain that was
consistently identified was the bi-products of rice grain processing.
Participants from regional
government, rice mills and NGOs discuss the barriers to expanding rice husk
bio-economies.
According to the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Myanmar produced over 25
million metric tonnes of rice in 2016, of which the Delta region harvests
almost half of. There are hundreds of small to medium sized rice mills in the
region. Consultation participants described that during the harvesting and
milling process, a considerable volume of less valuable bi-products are
produced. These include the rice bran, rice straw which is often burnt, and
rice husk which is often dumped directly (illegally) in waterways, causing
widespread impacts to river and drinking water quality, and navigational
safety.
Alternatively, there are a number
of existing rice husk bio-gasification plants that use outdated technologies
resulting in heavily polluted waterways. Similarly, there are existing rice
husk fuel pellet facilities but participants frequently said these plants emit
a foul smell.
Visualisation of rice bi-products
Initial value chain analysis
shows these low-value bi-products can be used to make higher value products
that can increase the income of rice farmers and millers and provide affordable
energy to the wider region. The Delta has a low level of electrification at
approximately 10% and suffers from chronic power shortages. This power shortage
not only limits business development but also contributes to widespread
deforestation of the mangroves for fuel wood. The government’s General
Administration Department stated “rice husk to energy should be the first
priority. If we can use this waste then everyone will benefit”.
The potential economic, social
and environmental benefits of this value chain are timely for the Delta, with
high proportions of landless rural households and reportedly the highest rates
of mangrove deforestation in Asia. The potential investments in this value
chain could significantly contribute to achievement of Myanmar’s Nationally
Determined Contribution greenhouse gas mitigation targets and REDD+, climate change
adaptation (including the NAPA), the Agricultural Development Strategy, and
Myanmar’s Sustainable Development Plan.
Potential outcomes of rice husk
energy for climate change.
GGGI visited an existing rice
husk bio-gasification plant in the Delta and the operators discussed barriers
to its development such as high startup costs and lack of affordable finance
with up to 13% loan interest being reported. The financing shortfalls also
limits access to modern clean technologies that are causing other environmental
impacts.
GGGIs Myanmar Programme Officer
Thiha Aung discuss issues at the Kyaiklat rice husk power plant.
This early analysis will feed
into further in-depth value chain assessment by GGGI to design tailored
financing solutions and social interventions that are pro-poor and lead to
socially inclusive improvements.
Ag Feels the Effects of Government
Shutdown
WASHINGTON,
DC -- Two weeks into the partial government shutdown and it seems there is
still no clear road ahead as to when the affected seven departments and various
agencies may reopen, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA). This is due to an ongoing funding dispute between President Donald
Trump and House Democrats over a border wall along the United States' southern
boundary with Mexico as a condition to his signing appropriations bills.
Democrats oppose inclusion of funding for this purpose.
Trump met with both Democratic and Republican Congressional Leadership at the White House on Wednesday to try and resolve differences of opinion to no avail. Yesterday, as the 116th Congress was seated and Democrats took control of the House for the first time since 2010, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) pushed a vote on a funding bill that would restart funding for all affected departments and agencies, with the exception of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), through September 30, 2019. A separate bill was passed to fund DHS through February 8 as Congress debates the best path toward border security.
The Senate is not likely to take up either of the bills for a vote given the Administration's stated unwillingness to sign either into law. The President and Congressional Leadership met today to discuss possible ways to end the impasse. Unfortunately, no agreement was reached.
As uncertainty looms, the closure of departments the rice industry relies on for information such as trade data, promotional funding, and the ability to sign up for safety net and other critical programs is concerning. Up until this week, many of those entities were able to continue some operations utilizing carryover funds, but those have been extinguished swiftly now leading to a true shutdown.
Implicated in the shutdown are USDA mission areas directly impacting farmers, including a complete shutdown of the Farm Service Agency (FSA). According to Undersecretary Bill Northey, farmers will be unable to pay off marketing assistance loans taken out at harvest, meaning farmers will be unable to receive clearance to move the crop they intended to sell in January until that loan is repaid. Also, farmers who have FSA direct farm operating loans with payments due in the near future will be unable to make payments until FSA reopens; however, FSA says they will take into account the shutdown as a real disruption and farmers should not be at a disadvantage.
Despite reports that Market Facilitation Program (MFP) payments and other payments may still be disbursed from FSA, USA Rice understands that no FSA-derived payments, including MFP payments, are being disbursed. Northey has indicated that Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue will consider whether extending the January 15 deadline for sign up makes sense. We interpret this to mean that the deadline for sign up will be extended if the shutdown goes beyond the deadline. It is also important to note that during the shutdown, no funding awards through the Agricultural Trade Promotion program, one of the three legs of USDA's trade mitigation plan, will be made.
Other known USDA functions that have been disrupted are many, including the suspended publication of the monthly World Agricultural Outlook Board's supply and demand estimates report (WASDE), anticipated on January 11. During the last shutdown in 2013, scheduled USDA reports, including the WASDE, were canceled. Further, USDA has restricted access to any Foreign Agricultural Services' Global Agricultural Trade System (GATS) data and suspended updates to almost all USDA websites and data sources.
"USA Rice activities through the Market Access Program (MAP) and Foreign Market Development (FMD) program are severely curtailed due to no allocation of funds for this fiscal year," said USA Rice Vice President International Sarah Moran. "Additionally, awards for the new Agricultural Trade Promotion (ATP) program were expected in early January but that too will be delayed while the government is shutdown. There are limited tenders for food aid and nutrition assistance programs."
"As we approach another projected year of poor economic forecasts and a decline in net farm income, we urge Congress and President Trump to resolve these differences and fund the government so USDA will begin functioning again and the new farm bill can be implemented," said USA Rice President & CEO Betsy Ward. "This shutdown has very real implications for an industry already in distress."
Trump met with both Democratic and Republican Congressional Leadership at the White House on Wednesday to try and resolve differences of opinion to no avail. Yesterday, as the 116th Congress was seated and Democrats took control of the House for the first time since 2010, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) pushed a vote on a funding bill that would restart funding for all affected departments and agencies, with the exception of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), through September 30, 2019. A separate bill was passed to fund DHS through February 8 as Congress debates the best path toward border security.
The Senate is not likely to take up either of the bills for a vote given the Administration's stated unwillingness to sign either into law. The President and Congressional Leadership met today to discuss possible ways to end the impasse. Unfortunately, no agreement was reached.
As uncertainty looms, the closure of departments the rice industry relies on for information such as trade data, promotional funding, and the ability to sign up for safety net and other critical programs is concerning. Up until this week, many of those entities were able to continue some operations utilizing carryover funds, but those have been extinguished swiftly now leading to a true shutdown.
Implicated in the shutdown are USDA mission areas directly impacting farmers, including a complete shutdown of the Farm Service Agency (FSA). According to Undersecretary Bill Northey, farmers will be unable to pay off marketing assistance loans taken out at harvest, meaning farmers will be unable to receive clearance to move the crop they intended to sell in January until that loan is repaid. Also, farmers who have FSA direct farm operating loans with payments due in the near future will be unable to make payments until FSA reopens; however, FSA says they will take into account the shutdown as a real disruption and farmers should not be at a disadvantage.
Despite reports that Market Facilitation Program (MFP) payments and other payments may still be disbursed from FSA, USA Rice understands that no FSA-derived payments, including MFP payments, are being disbursed. Northey has indicated that Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue will consider whether extending the January 15 deadline for sign up makes sense. We interpret this to mean that the deadline for sign up will be extended if the shutdown goes beyond the deadline. It is also important to note that during the shutdown, no funding awards through the Agricultural Trade Promotion program, one of the three legs of USDA's trade mitigation plan, will be made.
Other known USDA functions that have been disrupted are many, including the suspended publication of the monthly World Agricultural Outlook Board's supply and demand estimates report (WASDE), anticipated on January 11. During the last shutdown in 2013, scheduled USDA reports, including the WASDE, were canceled. Further, USDA has restricted access to any Foreign Agricultural Services' Global Agricultural Trade System (GATS) data and suspended updates to almost all USDA websites and data sources.
"USA Rice activities through the Market Access Program (MAP) and Foreign Market Development (FMD) program are severely curtailed due to no allocation of funds for this fiscal year," said USA Rice Vice President International Sarah Moran. "Additionally, awards for the new Agricultural Trade Promotion (ATP) program were expected in early January but that too will be delayed while the government is shutdown. There are limited tenders for food aid and nutrition assistance programs."
"As we approach another projected year of poor economic forecasts and a decline in net farm income, we urge Congress and President Trump to resolve these differences and fund the government so USDA will begin functioning again and the new farm bill can be implemented," said USA Rice President & CEO Betsy Ward. "This shutdown has very real implications for an industry already in distress."
Govt to implement Geographical Indication Law after 18 years
By
January 2, 2019
‘Int’l brands are unabatedly selling
Pakistan-origin goods due to non-finalisation of GI Law’
ISLAMABAD: As Pakistan is yet to implement Geographical Indication Law ever
since it was drafted in the year 2000, the Ministry of Commerce is set to
submit the draft law to the cabinet for approval before presenting it to the
parliament for the same.
The GI Law, which is pending for
a long time, was needed to protect commercial heritage of the country’s
products, including basmati rice, Peshawari chappal, Multani halwa, Sindhi
ajrak, Sargodha’s kinnow, Kasuri methi, Sindhri mango, Dir knives, Swati wild
mushrooms, Nili-Ravi buffalo, Chaman grapes, Pashmina shawls, Gilgit
Baltistan’s apricot etc.
Taking notice of the long pending
draft law, Commerce Secretary Mohammad Younus Dagha has asked the relevant
department and staff to submit the draft GI Law to Ministry of Law within two
days so that it could be approved by the cabinet and subsequently by the
parliament.
The commerce secretary was briefed
about the importance of the GI Law by Intellectual Property Organization of
Pakistan (IPO-Pakistan) Chairman Mujeeb Ahmed Khan during a meeting on
Wednesday.
According to sources, the meeting
was informed that international brands were unabatedly selling Pakistan-origin
goods due to non-finalisation of the GI Law, causing huge losses to the local
producers/manufactures.
It is pertinent to mention that
the Commerce Division has been working on the GI Law since 2000, but the law
remained pending for the last 18 years due to “differences between influential
lobbies”, leading to failure of marketplace regulation. Former prime minister
Shahid Khaqqan Abbasi had also directed the ministry to speed up the process
in finalising the draft law.
Member countries of the World
Trade Organisation (WTO) need to give protection to GIs under Article 22-24 of
the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) agreement.
Unless Pakistan provides GI protection, it cannot obtain the same for its own
goods in other countries that have the GI Law.
The GI Law covers a wide variety
of products that include industrial, agricultural, and horticultural and
others.
In the absence of the said law,
Pakistan cannot claim exclusive GI of basmati rice. The Rice Exporters Association
of Pakistan has long been demanding the government to approve GI Law as Indian
basmati rice was fetching more prices in the European market as compared
to the same products of Pakistan.
Pakistanis had put up a strong
argument with EU as to how it was possible that a farmer only 40km away from an
Indian rice grower could get a lower price for the same product. Later, India
had agreed to enter into talks on GI for basmati rice in Geneva.
According to official sources,
the commerce secretary has assured unflinching support of the ministry to
IPO-Pakistan on all issues including the enactment of GI Law and Industrial
Design Rules.
Younus Dagha appreciated
IPO-Pakistan for successfully implementing ‘first come first serve registration
system’ in trademark registry. He maintained that this would go a long way in
bringing transparency and timely disposal of work for IP applicants.
During the meeting held at IPO
office, Mujeeb Ahmed Khan presented a 3-year roadmap of the organization and
apprised the secretary of numerous initiatives taken by his organization to
facilitate and dispose of IP applications.
Giving details about the
international treaties, the chairman stated that IPO has started working on
the accession process on treaties related to international registration of
trademarks and patents. Meanwhile, he added, the copyright office has been
connected through a virtual network with all other offices of the organization.
Texas has enough sun and wind to quit coal, Rice researchers say
Jan.
2, 2019 Updated: Jan. 2, 2019 9:20 p.m.
2of 2A West Texas
solar farm. By coordinating wind energy with solar production, Texas could
replace coal, a new study finds.
Texas might have the perfect environment to
quit coal for good.Texas is one of the only places where the natural patterns
of wind and sun could produce power around the clock, according to new research from
Rice University.
Scientists found that between wind energy from
West Texas and the Gulf Coast, and solar energy across the state, Texas could
meet a significant portion of its electricity demand from renewable power
without extensive battery storage. The reason: These sources generate power at
different times of day, meaning that coordinating them could replace production
from coal-fired plants.
“There
is no where else in the world better positioned to operate without coal than
Texas is,” said Dan Cohan, an associate professor of civil and environmental
engineering at Rice University who co-authored the report with a student,
Joanna Slusarewicz. “Wind and solar are easily capable of picking up the
slack.”
Resolving the winter ordeal India
could work with IRRI & ASEAN nations to
collectively develop sustainable alternatives to deal with the persistent issue
of straw burning Anish Tore2
Jan 2019 6:51 PM Nobody can ignore the winter
smog in Delhi, probably because the smog is the only thing that one can see
with bare eyes in the capital's now infamous winters! Though a report by System
of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting (SAFAR), under the aegis of the Ministry
of Earth Sciences, shows that vehicles and industries contribute the most to
the pollution in National Capital Region (NCR), pollution arising from farmers
burning crop residue in the regions adjoining NCR has taken the centre stage
recently. Despite states blaming each other for the problem, it is now well
established that 'stubble burning' by farmers of Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh
and Delhi itself is a major contributor to the deadly smog-soaked winters. The
government responded to this problem by doing something it loves to do –
banning crop residue burning. The government seems to have a problem of memory
loss, otherwise, it would have remembered that almost all of its previous
attempts to ban such practices failed disastrously. India could have learned
from the international experience – where similar bans imposed by Communist
China and the semi-authoritarian Philippines failed to persuade or coerce rice
farmers. Another initiative of granting subsidies to farmers to buy machines
that help in 'rice straw management', has also failed to take off in an
expected manner. Both the ban and the subsidy-grant initiatives have the
classical markings of being 'top-down' interventions, which, on most occasions,
are bound to fail. However, India could take lessons from the Philippines in
this regard.
The
Philippine Rice Research Institute (PRRI), in association with some farmer
groups, NGOs and university students, organises an annual 'Dayami Festival' to
spread awareness about the harmful effects of rice straw burning and the
available alternatives to sustainably manage the straw. In Filipino, the word
'Dayami' refers to 'hay' or 'grass straw'. Almost everyone has a role in this
festival, for example, the 2017 Dayami festival saw university students making
artistic representations of insects (using leftover rice straw) that are killed
due to stubble burning. On the sidelines of the festival, activists and
scientists affiliated to PRRI & various NGOs provide tips to farmers on
utilising leftover rice straw.
The
suggestions include ploughing the rice straw back into the field as a natural
fertiliser (paddy cultivation is particularly nutrient intensive), supplying
paddy straw for generation of bio-energy, and using the paddy straw as a
substrate for mushroom cultivation. At the festival, the emphasis was not on
preventing rice stubble burning (as in the Indian case) but to minimise the
costs for farmers who opt for alternative methods of paddy straw disposal and
supplementing the farmers' source of income.
This approach, involving different sections of
society in the pursuit of a solution, is expected to be much more effective
compared to the 'carrot-and-stick approach' of the Indian State, where it
offers subsidies for rice stubble management on the one hand and aims to take
penal action against farmers who continue to burn rice stubble on the other.
There is already an element of distrust between farmers' groups and the state
over long-standing issues, including crop prices and insurance. Recently, farmers
from across the country gathered on the streets of the national capital on
November 29 and 30, 2018, with a long list of grievances. In this backdrop,
paddy cultivators are less likely to respond to the government only initiatives
due to the high levels of animosity.
The problem of crop residue burning can't be
solved by technical or legal interventions alone. We need teams of doctors,
scientists, activists and students to engage with farmers and farmer
organisations and look for solutions together. The People's Science Movement
(PSM) is one such platform to achieve the target, wherein health, pollution and
environmental degradation form the basis of most of its programmes. A
full-fledged intervention by the PSM in the problem of stubble burning may also
provide a convenient entry point for the PSM in the northern agrarian belt. By
helping the paddy farmers transition to a better, more sustainable style of
farming, the PSM might be able to develop a constituency for itself in the
region.
Since we live in an increasingly globalised
world, we must make an attempt to seek global solutions to our local problem of
paddy straw burning. Rice is one of the top three food crops in the world and
the staple food of an overwhelming majority of Asians. Media reports and research
papers have highlighted how the problem of paddy straw burning raised concerns
in the Philippines, China, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.
We might be able to develop additional methods
to sustainably dispose of paddy straw via collaborative research efforts and
co-operation with other rice-producing countries in the ASEAN bloc. Prime
Minister Narendra Modi, while attending the ASEAN summit in the Philippines in
2017, paid a visit to both the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) as
well as PRRI. During the visit, the PM donated two varieties of rice to IRRI to
bolster their rice-gene bank, when he was also informed about IRRI's work to
develop flood-resistant rice varieties, which would help a world threatened by
extreme events and Climate Change.
During
this visit, steps were also taken to operationalise the newly inaugurated South
Asian centre of IRRI, located in Varanasi. Thus, a well laid out infrastructure
for future co-operation in development and dissemination of better rice varieties
was put in place during Modi's visit. Though PRRI & IRRI are already
conducting research to find ways to sustainably manage paddy straw; this issue,
curiously, did not figure in the list of priorities of the Indian delegation
during PM Modi's visit. There already exists an infrastructure for agricultural
co-operation between India and IRRI. It would be wise to see if there exists a
possibility to collaborate and find common solutions to the vexed problem of
paddy straw burning. Further, India could explore the possibility of
collaborating with countries such as Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar who
similarly witness large-scale paddy straw burning. Co-operation between India
and ASEAN countries, in their common pursuit towards finding sustainable solutions
to the problem of straw burning, will add another layer to the scientific &
people-to-people (P2P) diplomatic co-operation between the two. (The views
expressed are strictly personal)
http://www.millenniumpost.in/opinion/resolving-the-winter-ordeal-334513
http://www.millenniumpost.in/opinion/resolving-the-winter-ordeal-334513
Make Nice With Rice to Boost Your Diet
By Len Canter
HealthDay Reporter
HealthDay Reporter
TUESDAY, Dec. 4, 2018 (HealthDay
News) -- If you love rice, you might be wondering how you can make it part of
healthy meals. Whether you're trying to drop pounds or stay at a healthy
weight, some adjustments will let you keep it on the menu.
Rice belongs to the grain family.
While grains are an important part of your overall diet, standard white rice
isn't a nutritious choice -- it's not a whole grain. What's more, it's a food
that has 200 calories per cup, so you want to make sure that you maximize
nutrients as well as flavor.
First, opt for brown rice, the
whole-grain form, as often as possible. White rice has gone through a process
that removes its fiber and many of its nutrients, including protein, iron and
some B vitamins.
There are many types -- and colors
-- of whole grain rice to sample, including brown basmati, red rice, purple
Thai and Chinese black rice. Popular Wehani rice is a whole grain, reddish-brown
American hybrid of basmati and brown rices. Note that wild rice is another
tasty choice, though technically it's not a rice, but rather a semi-aquatic
grass. It makes a great medley when mixed with brown rice.
Also experiment with different ways
to turn rice into a meal rather than a side dish. For lunch or a cold supper,
load a whole-wheat pita pocket with cooked and cooled rice and chopped
vegetables and top with a light vinaigrette.
Or try a cold rice salad for a
to-go meal. For your protein, add in chunks of turkey, chicken, tofu or nuts,
then blend in a handful of dried raisins or cranberries and a sprinkling of
seasonings.
You can even get creative and make
homemade sushi rolls at home. Use avocado and cucumber if you're not a fan of
raw fish.
Baked with milk, eggs, vanilla, a
small amount of sweetener and cinnamon, brown rice can even make a healthy
version of rice pudding for dessert or even breakfast.
More information
The Whole Grains Council has more on all types of rice to help you enjoy the healthiest varieties.
Tonight's dinner: Spicy egg fried mushroom rice
Serve with
extra hot sauce, soy and black sesame seeds CREDIT: ELEANOR
STEAFEL
·
3 JANUARY 2019 • 6:00AM
Sometimes what you really need is student food. Quick,
satisfying bowlfuls to be shovelled down with glee. Beans on toast with an
unholy amount of budget supermarket cheddar (and extra Worcestershire sauce,
obviously) will do it, mac and cheese can hit the spot, or even a bowl of mashed potatoes,
served as Nora Ephron does in Heartburn: in bed, with a thin
slice of cold butter added to each forkful.
Sometimes, however, it's heat and salt you want. Egg fried rice
with plenty of spring onions, chilli, and extra soy and hot sauce is the
perfect fuel for your comfort food craving. You could use basmati or any other
long grain rice - I just like the nutty flavour of brown rice.
To continue reading this article
IRRI opens new center in India
01.04.2019
VARANASI, INDIA — The International
Rice Research Institute (IRRI) opened the IRRI South Asia Regional Center (IRRI
SARC) with Prime Minister of India Shri Narendra Modi inaugurating the event.
The research facility will work to
strengthen the national research capacity of rice growing countries in South
Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
“This is a landmark moment for
India and IRRI,” said Matthew Morell, director general of the IRRI. “This
state-of-the-art rice research center will catalyze South-South collaboration,
strengthen the research expertise and capacity of rice growing countries in the
region, and contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals. It is only through
the support of our network of global partners, such as the government of India,
that knowledge and innovations gained at this center can be speedily tailored
to meet needs of farmers in India, across South Asia and across Africa.”
Prime Minister Modi took a tour of
the laboratories of the IRRI SARC, interacting with the scientists of the
institute.
IRRI SARC facilities include the
Center of Excellence in Rice Value Addition (CERVA), a suite of modern
laboratories where rice grains are assessed for quality and nutritional value
and sensory evaluations for grain taste, texture, and aroma are conducted;
on-site facilities.
The education and training arm of
IRRI SARC, IRRI Education, will teach scientists and agriculture leaders about
the latest technologies and innovations for sustainable farming; and
laboratories for digital crop monitoring and assessment, and demonstration
fields where variety testing is conducted.
Other inauguration attendees were
Hon’ble Governor of Uttar Pradesh, Shri Ram Naik; Chief Minister for Uttar
Pradesh Shri Yogi Adityanath; Minister of Communications and Minister of State
for Railways, Shri Manoj Sinha; Agriculture Minister for Uttar Pradesh Shri
Surya Pratap Shahi, Member of Parliament (Chandauli) Shri Mahendra Nath Pandey;
Secretary for Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare Shri
Sanjay Agarwal; Principal Secretary Agriculture, Uttar Pradesh Shri Amit Mohan
Prasad and Joint Secretary (Seeds), Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers
Welfare Shri Ashwani Kumar. Representatives from the South Asian Association
for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and other key donors and partner organizations
were also in attendance.
Wild rice task force calls for new stewardship council
A governor's task force on wild rice reached no consensus on major
changes to protect the plants in Minnesota but instead suggests creating a
permanent stewardship council to develop wild rice protections and plants for
the future. (file / News Tribune)
A task force appointed by Gov.
Mark Dayton last May aimed at finding ways to protect, preserve and promote
wild rice across Minnesota has ended with several recommendations but no new
consensus on state regulations.
The task force's final report,
made public Friday, said the issue of protecting wild rice is too complex for
the members to solve over a few months.
"Given the extraordinary
complexity of the subject matter and the short timeline for the task force,
task force members felt they would be remiss to make final recommendations on
some complex areas of the topic without additional efforts and voices,'' the
final report notes.
Instead, task force members said
their primary recommendation is to create a new, apparently permanent state
Wild Rice Stewardship Council to develop long-term solutions to wild rice
problems and long term protections for wild rice lakes and rivers.
The proposed stewardship council
members "would represent a wide range of interests and perspectives, and
be charged with making interdisciplinary recommendations on the management,
monitoring, outreach research, and regulation regarding wild rice,'' the final
report notes, adding that the new council would be tasked by the state to
recommend a statewide standardized monitoring program, recommend a
comprehensive, statewide management plan for wild rice; encourage more research
on wild rice; and develop a "roadmap" for protecting wild rice from
sulfate.
Dayton formed the task force by
executive order in May 2018. The 14 members met nine times over three months to
find ways to address the "regulatory, economic, and scientific challenges
associated with protecting wild rice."
The final report outlines several
recommendations to the Minnesota Legislature and to incoming Gov. Tim Walz to
both protect wild rice and support continued economic development and job creation
across the state, including developing better relations between state and
tribal interests; instructing the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency to improve
its variance process; and declaring the first week of September "Wild Rice
Week" to build awareness of the value of wild rice in Minnesota.
The task force — comprised of
representatives from Red Lake Nation, Dakota Tribes, iron mining and copper
mining corporate officials, environmental advocacy groups, scientists, state
and local government agencies and others — agreed on basic tenets of protecting
wild rice and clean water; ensuring the viability of Minnesota communities;
respecting tribal sovereignty; the need to address biological, chemical, and
hydrological threats to wild rice; and sharing the burdens and benefits of any
solutions the state develops.
Kathryn Hoffman, who heads the
Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy and was a member of the task force,
said effort "made significant progress toward finding common ground on
solutions to protect wild rice'' despite the limited timeframe.
"The recommendation to form
a Wild Rice Stewardship Council with full representation from all 11
federally-recognized Native American tribes, bands, and communities in the
State of Minnesota is critical for continued momentum forward,'' Hoffman said
Friday in a statement. "We hope that Gov.-elect Tim Walz and the Minnesota
Legislature adopt its recommendations so that we can continue to work together
toward science-based solutions that protect wild rice."
An industry representative on the
task force did not immediately respond to a request to comment on the report
Friday afternoon.
The task force didn't answer the
question of potential sulfate pollution of wild rice beds from industrial
pollution, especially mining, and from sewage treatment plants. Scientists who
have studied the issue say sulfates can convert to sulfides in some waters and
harm development of wild rice. But there is disagreement between industry
scientists and others on how much impact those sulfides have, especially in
waters with different iron contents and chemistry.
The final report offered a vague
statement on sulfate saying that, while most researchers agree the
sulfate/sulfide process harms wild rice "there are wild rice waters that
do not fit this relationship where wild rice thrives. The rate at which sulfate
is converted to sulfide, and how wild rice plants are affected, is an active
area of scientific discussion."
The report also notes that while
the Pollution Control Agency has forwarded an equation to determine the
sulfate/sulfide/wild rice relationship for individual lakes and rivers
"other researchers have disagreed with this approach and think the
equation does not sufficiently capture the dynamic biological, chemical, and hydrological
relationships related to the effects of sulfate on wild rice. Some researchers
believe the equation-based approach proposed by MPCA was over-protective of
wild rice, and others believe it was under-protective."
Genetically
modified 'shortcut' boosts plant growth by 40%
·
3
January 2019 
Image copyrightBRIAN STAUFFERImage captionThese genetically modified tobacco plants were found to be 40%
more productive
Image copyrightBRIAN STAUFFERImage captionThese genetically modified tobacco plants were found to be 40%
more productive
The researchers say they have found a way of overcoming natural
restrictions in the process of photosynthesis that limit crop productivity.
They believe the method could be used to significantly boost
yields from important crops including rice and wheat.
The study has been published in
the journal Science.
Researchers are growing increasingly concerned about the ability
of the world to feed a growing population in a time of serious climate change.
It's expected that agricultural demand will increase globally by
60-120% by the middle of this century compared to 2005. Increases in crop
yields however are rising by less that 2% per annum, so there's likely to be a
significant shortfall by 2050.
While the use of fertilisers, pesticides and mechanisation have
boosted yields over the past few decades, their potential for future growth is
limited.
Instead, scientists are increasingly looking to improving the
process of photosynthesis as a way of increasing food productivity.
Image copyrightJAMES BALTZ/COLLEGE OF
AGRICULTURALImage captionAerial view of the 2017 field trials. Researchers found that
plants engineered with a synthetic shortcut are about 40% more productive.
While plants use the energy from sunlight to turn carbon dioxide
and water into sugars that fuel the plant's growth, the chemical steps involved
produce some toxic compounds that actually limit the potential of the crop.
These toxins are then recycled by the plant in a process called
photorespiration - but this costs the plant precious energy that could have
been used to increase yield.
In this study, researchers set out to developed a way around the
photosynthesis glitch.
"We've tried three different biochemical designs with the
aim of shortcutting this very energy expensive process," said lead author
Dr Paul South with the US Agricultural Research Service.
"It's been estimated that in plants like soybeans, rice and
fruit and vegetables, it can be a significant drag on yield by as much as 36%.
We've tried to engineer this shortcut to make them more energy efficient - and
in field trials this translated into a 40% increase in plant biomass."
One important aspect of the problem is that it becomes more
prevalent at higher temperatures and under drought conditions.
"Our goal is to build better plants that can take the heat
today and in the future, to help equip farmers with the technology they need to
feed the world," said co-author Amanda Cavanagh, a postdoctoral researcher
at the University of Illinois.
The researchers chose tobacco plants because they are easy and
quick to modify. They also form a fully closed canopy in the field similar to
many food crops.
The team is now hoping to use these findings to boost the yields
of soybean, rice, potato and tomato plants.
Image copyrightL. BRIAN STAUFFERImage captionThe
experiment is significant say researchers because it involved two years of of
field trials
"This process is very similar among all the crops that we
are looking to grow," said Dr South.
"We are are really hoping that this is a technology that
provides a tool that further optimises agriculture so that we are not using
outside inputs as much and we are growing more food on less land."
However, the authors recognise that using genetic modification
is controversial in many parts of the world.
They argue that a lengthy review process will ensure that if
food crops are developed using this technology, they will be accepted by
farmers and consumers alike.
"The research that's necessary to prove that it has low
environmental impact and is safe for consumption takes a minimum of ten years
and many more dollars in research funds to make sure that this is a good and
safe food product," said Dr South.
The technology is being developed for royalty-free distribution
to smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and in Southeast Asia.
It is being funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research and the UK's Department for
International Development.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46750092
Police arrest 2 for
alleged robbery, beheading rice dealer in Osogbo
Last Thursday at 6:09 PM
The police command in Osun says it has arrested
two suspects over alleged robbery and killing of a rice dealer by beheading
him.
Nigerian
Police
Nigerian
Police
The State Commissioner of Police,
Mr Fimihan Adeoye, made this known while parading the suspects and other crime
suspects at the Police Headquarters on Thursday in Osogbo.
Adeoye said the arrested suspects were contracted to kill one
Isiaka Sanusi, a 43-year-old businessman, on May 14, 2018, at about 9 pm, along
Iwo Road, Osogbo.
He said one Yekini Ayinde, also known as ‘Abija’, (a principal
suspect still at large) had contacted the deceased to supply him 500 bags of
rice.
He said the deceased was lured into making the supply in Osogbo,
from Saki in Oyo State, lodged in an hotel after the goods were supplied and
later taken out to be killed.
He said Ayinde contracted the arrested suspects, Dauda Amusat,
known as Adasi and Pariola Kabiru, with five others, to kill the businessman after
collecting the money initially paid to him for the supply.
He said Amusat and his gang killed the victim by cutting off his
head, and later confessed how four members of the gang took away the head for
ritual purpose.
Adeoye said three of the seven-man gang had earlier been
arrested and charged to court, and that the newly arrested suspects would
equally be charged after completion of investigation.
He said the principal suspect in the case, Ayinde, was however
still at large, but promised that the command would do the needful to ensure
his arrest.
The police boss also announced the arrest of two suspected
cultists of the Eye Confraternity over their involvement in secret cult
activities and killings at Osun State Polytechnic, Iree.
Adeoye said all the suspects would be charged to court after the
police had concluded their investigations.
The commissioners appealed to residents of the state to report
and shun all acts and forms of criminality, advising the youths to embrace hard
work as there was no short cut to getting rich.
Source: Pulse
Nigeria
Eyewitness? Submit your stories now via social or:
WhatsApp: +2349055172167
Email: eyewitness@pulse.ng
Email: eyewitness@pulse.ng
New
Year, New Congress, New Leadership
By Frank Leach
January 3, 2019
WASHINGTON, DC -- Today at noon
marked the start of the 116th Congress as Members of the House and Senate were
sworn-in on the floor of their respective chambers by Speaker Nancy Pelosi
(D-CA) and Vice President Mike Pence.
Prior to the swearing-in ceremony, the House formally elected Pelosi to
serve as the new Speaker of the House.
The 116th Congress includes 100 new
members - 91 new members of the House and nine new members of the Senate. New members of Congress representing rice
states/districts include Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO); Rep. Josh Harder (D-CA-10);
Rep. TJ Cox (D-CA-21); Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX-02); and Rep. Michael Guest
(R-MS-03). There are an additional ten
members who won special elections during the 115th Congress, and were
re-elected during the November elections, including Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith
(R-MS) who was elected to finish the term of retired Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS),
and Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX), who was re-elected in November after finishing
the term of former Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX).
In the House, Democrats now hold 235
seats, while the Republicans hold 199 seats.
One House race, North Carolina's ninth district, remains
outstanding. In the Senate, the Republicans
gained three seats, and now hold a 53 to 47 majority.
Over the next few weeks, the House
and Senate are expected to announce updated Committee rosters. It already has been announced that Rep.
Collin Peterson (D-MN) will serve as the chair of the House Agriculture
Committee and Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX) will serve as the Ranking Member. In the Senate, it is expected that there will
not be any leadership changes atop the Senate Agriculture Committee, and that
Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) and Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) will continue as
Chairman and Ranking Member, respectively. 
"USA Rice looks forward to
meeting the new members of the 116th Congress and welcoming back our friends
who were re-elected in November," said Charley Mathews, Jr., California
rice farmer and USA Rice Chairman.
"There is a lot of work to be done over the next two years, and USA
Rice looks forward to educating elected officials on our issues and advocating
for the priorities of the U.S. rice industry to ensure our members' voices and
concerns are heard and heeded."
USA Rice Daily
When
Her Family Left Vietnam, She Carried A Backpack Full Of Rice During The Journey
LISTE
January 2, 20195:05 PM ET
Heard on All
Things Considered
When Loan Pham left Vietnam with her family for asylum in the
U.S., she brought a backpack of rice with her. She shares the story of her
journey for the series What They Took With Them.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
In 1939, a 14-year-old Jewish boy
escaped Nazi Germany, leaving his parents behind. He brought with him a single
toy, a stuffed monkey. And years later, that monkey helped reunite him with
family he didn't know he had. We told his story last year, got a huge response.
And after it aired, we asked if you had any similar stories.
Loan Pham did. Pham was born in
Vietnam 34 years ago. She came to the U.S. for asylum. Her father was branded a
war criminal because he had fought alongside American troops during the Vietnam
War. Her whole family was punished for that.
LOAN PHAM: Our family didn't have
any assets, as in a boat or a home or even a cooking pot. And we just sat out
there in the rain, starving, hungry all the time. I kept on stealing bananas
from the village market. And one time, I did get caught. The vendor was
obviously very unhappy because bananas were her livelihood.
She decided to tie me up. And she
spread hay all around me, and she said, I'm going to burn you. I think her
emotions got to her. And she started shrieking when the fire got too great, and
it was going to get to me. That was when a farmer walked on by, and he saw what
was going on. He snatched me and saved me.
When word got to my mom, my mom
began to cry. And she broke off a branch of bamboo, and she started whipping me
with it. She was ashamed that her child resorted to stealing because she
couldn't tolerate the hunger.
In 1991, we went from our village
of Quy Lai outside of Hue in central Vietnam to a refugee camp in Thailand and
then onto a housing project in Oakland, Calif. I was so excited, was on a
train. It was just unbelievable. You might as well take me to Mars.
The whole time, I was in charge
of a red backpack filled with loose rice. We were afraid of starving in the
United States. We were afraid that there would be no rice. I had never seen
this much rice my whole life. It was a really happy backpack.
I grew up without a backpack. I had
no idea how to put it on. I had no idea how the buckles snapped or the zippers
zipped, but I insisted on taking charge of it. And I never allowed it to escape
from my view. And I nibbled at the rice kernels just to make sure they were
real. And that's how we sustained ourselves for the first few weeks. And I used
that backpack to go to school at Fruitvale Elementary here in Oakland.
Since coming to the United
States, my dad is a janitor. My mom paints nails. They don't earn a lot of
money, but they're pretty content people. My mom's wish when we were growing up
was that she would eventually own a nail salon, and my sister and I would work
at the nail salon with her. That was her dream. That was never my dream. And as
of last weekend, all five kids have graduated from the UCs.
KELLY: Loan Pham - she's now
finishing a PhD in military history. As for the backpack that she carried from
Vietnam to the U.S., it was only used for a little while. It was flimsy. And
worse, it was red, and the color reminded her father of the communist
government. When a charity gave her a new American-made backpack, she threw the
Vietnamese one away.
Over the years, her parents sent
money back to their village to help pave roads and build an elementary school.
And Pham has since returned there for both professional and personal reasons.
She says people recognize her and welcome her.
PHAM: Actually, during the last
business trip I took, I was walking through the village market. Then this woman
said, child, do you want to buy some bananas? And I was like, oh, no thank you,
ma'am. And she said, you don't remember me, do you? And I said, I really don't.
I'm sorry. And she said, I was the one who tried to burn you. And then I
laughed. It was such a small world. It was funny to see that she can laugh
about it, and I can laugh about it as well.
NFA-NegOcc: Additional 160,000 bags of rice from Vietnam up for
unloading
NEGROS. National Food Authority- Negros Occidental personnel
inspect MV Tan BINH 79 docked at Bacolod Real Estate Development Corporation
Port in Bacolod City on Tuesday, January 1. The vessel carries 160,000 bags of
rice from Vietnam, the third import allocation for Negros Occidental for 2018.
(Contributed photo)
+
AA
-
January 4, 2019
THE additional eight metric tons, or 160,000 bags, of imported
rice from Vietnam is up for unloading, an official of the National Food
Authority (NFA) in Negros Occidental said.
Marianita Gellecanao, assistant provincial manager of NFA- Negros Occidental, said on Thursday, January 3, the additional buffer stocks for the province arrived at Bacolod Real Estate Development Corporation (Bredco) Port in Bacolod City on December 29.
Gellecanao said the third import allocation for the province for 2018 was shipped via MV Tan BINH 79.
The first import allocation of 80,000 bags arrived in July 2018 followed by 100,000 bags in November. Both stocks were imported from Thailand.
“The additional importation was actually approved by the NFA Council last year and is supposed to be shipped by November. It, however, arrived latter part of December,” she added.
Gellecanao, along with other NFA-Negros Occidental, inspected the vessel on Tuesday.
The stocks were subjected to 24-hour aeration before the unloading can be started most probably on Friday, January 4.
Gellecanao said under normal circumstance, meaning without disturbance like bad weather, the unloading may be completed in at least two weeks.
As of Thursday, the existing buffer stocks stored among warehouses in the province is about 50,000 bags, which are still up for distribution among local retailers.
Thus, the total inventory of government rice in Negros Occidental is currently pegged at 210,000 bags.
These stocks have a selling price of P25 per kilogram for accredited rice retailers. It will still be sold in the market at P27 per kilogram.
Gellecanao said given the province's average daily consumption requirement of 20,600 bags, the existing buffer may last up to 80 days.
NFA rice's participation in the total consumption requirement is only 10 percent, she added.
Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol earlier assured that there will be enough supply of rice this year.
Piñol, also the NFA Council chairman, said the NFA has established a stock inventory of 750,000-metric tons of imported rice in preparation for the lean months.
The volume, he said, will ensure an eight-month supply of government-subsidized rice at 10 percent market participation.
“In addition to the P7 billion worth of palay which will be procured by the NFA from local farmers, the NFA has given the assurance that there will be enough supply of government-subsidized rice in the market next year,” the agriculture chief added. (EPN)
Marianita Gellecanao, assistant provincial manager of NFA- Negros Occidental, said on Thursday, January 3, the additional buffer stocks for the province arrived at Bacolod Real Estate Development Corporation (Bredco) Port in Bacolod City on December 29.
Gellecanao said the third import allocation for the province for 2018 was shipped via MV Tan BINH 79.
The first import allocation of 80,000 bags arrived in July 2018 followed by 100,000 bags in November. Both stocks were imported from Thailand.
“The additional importation was actually approved by the NFA Council last year and is supposed to be shipped by November. It, however, arrived latter part of December,” she added.
Gellecanao, along with other NFA-Negros Occidental, inspected the vessel on Tuesday.
The stocks were subjected to 24-hour aeration before the unloading can be started most probably on Friday, January 4.
Gellecanao said under normal circumstance, meaning without disturbance like bad weather, the unloading may be completed in at least two weeks.
As of Thursday, the existing buffer stocks stored among warehouses in the province is about 50,000 bags, which are still up for distribution among local retailers.
Thus, the total inventory of government rice in Negros Occidental is currently pegged at 210,000 bags.
These stocks have a selling price of P25 per kilogram for accredited rice retailers. It will still be sold in the market at P27 per kilogram.
Gellecanao said given the province's average daily consumption requirement of 20,600 bags, the existing buffer may last up to 80 days.
NFA rice's participation in the total consumption requirement is only 10 percent, she added.
Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol earlier assured that there will be enough supply of rice this year.
Piñol, also the NFA Council chairman, said the NFA has established a stock inventory of 750,000-metric tons of imported rice in preparation for the lean months.
The volume, he said, will ensure an eight-month supply of government-subsidized rice at 10 percent market participation.
“In addition to the P7 billion worth of palay which will be procured by the NFA from local farmers, the NFA has given the assurance that there will be enough supply of government-subsidized rice in the market next year,” the agriculture chief added. (EPN)
Vietnamese rice makes name in world market
FRIDAY, JANUARY 4, 2019 -
7:05:00
In 2018, Vietnam’s total rice
exports reached 6.15 million tonnes, with export turnover of 3.15 billion USD.
The industry saw a 5.7% increase in volume and 19.6% increase in value compared
to 2017.
Lộc Trời 28 is a short term rice
variety and the final product between the hybrid of Loc Troi 1 and Basmati rice
variety of India. High-yielding, fragrant and nutritious compared to other
varieties, Loc Troi 28 was well received at an international rice convention
held in China.
Vietnamese rice producers now focus
on production value, not just increasing volume. Furthermore, Vietnam has
become a member of the global sustainable rice production programme, and for
the first time in years, Vietnam rice price is higher than Thailand’s.
In recent years, Vietnam’s rice
industry has paid more attention to promotional activities. The launch of
Vietnam’s national rice logo has reiterated the efforts to bring more rice to
the world market.
However, in the context of global
warming and unpredictable weather patterns, as well as limitation in value
chains and farmers’ struggle to make a living from growing rice, there is much
needed to be done.
The global market is changing at a
rapid pace and it requires Vietnam’s rice industry to heighten the production
volume, improve the quality and deliver more diverse rice products.-VNA
China Finally Okays U.S.
Rice Imports
BEIJING, CHINA -- USA Rice's office in China reports that China
Customs announced today on its official website that the China market is opened
for the import of U.S. milled rice effective from December 27, 2018, in
accordance with the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Protocol signed between the
United States and China from July of 2017
"This is a tremendous milestone that has taken more
than a decade to reach and is a result of the insistence from USA Rice in
including rice as a step in resolving the trade dispute between China and the
U.S.," said USA Rice Chair Charley Mathews, Jr., a California rice
farmer. "As with all our dealings with China, the devil is in the
details, and we have many questions, including when the first sales will be
made, but this is definitely good news for our producers and millers as we
enter the New Year."
Recently China made large purchases of U.S. soybeans that
received widespread media coverage, however, imports of U.S. rice were illegal
in China and several administrative steps, such as today's action by China
Customs, were necessary before actual sales could take place.
China will now need to post the list of approved U.S. export
mills and facilities of milled rice developed in consultation between the U.S.
rice industry, USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and
China's Agricultural Inspection Service. In 2017, USA Rice worked with
U.S. and Chinese government officials to facilitate Chinese inspections of some
10 U.S. mills and facilities interested in exporting rice to China to
demonstrate their compliance with the complex U.S.-China phytosanitary
protocol.
"What is still not 100 percent clear is whether China has
published the complete list of all the U.S. facilities approved to ship to
China," said Bobby Hanks, Chair of USA Rice's International Trade Policy
Committee and a Louisiana miller. "We will be looking in the days
ahead to USDA and the U.S. Trade Representative for clarification to make sure
that all approved U.S. facilities are eligible. We of course are looking
for the first confirmed rice sale to China. This important day for the
U.S. rice industry is the result of the trade policy leadership of the Trump
administration and the commitment of Secretary Perdue to open new markets for
U.S. agriculture," concluded Hanks.
Sign-Up for the
Daily
Email Address
BEIJING, CHINA -- USA Rice's office in China reports that China
Customs announced today on its official website that the China market is opened
for the import of U.S. milled rice effective from December 27, 2018, in
accordance with the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Protocol signed between the
United States and China from July of 2017
"This is a tremendous milestone that has taken more
than a decade to reach and is a result of the insistence from USA Rice in
including rice as a step in resolving the trade dispute between China and the
U.S.," said USA Rice Chair Charley Mathews, Jr., a California rice
farmer. "As with all our dealings with China, the devil is in the
details, and we have many questions, including when the first sales will be
made, but this is definitely good news for our producers and millers as we
enter the New Year."
Recently China made large purchases of U.S. soybeans that
received widespread media coverage, however, imports of U.S. rice were illegal
in China and several administrative steps, such as today's action by China
Customs, were necessary before actual sales could take place.
China will now need to post the list of approved U.S. export
mills and facilities of milled rice developed in consultation between the U.S.
rice industry, USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and
China's Agricultural Inspection Service. In 2017, USA Rice worked with
U.S. and Chinese government officials to facilitate Chinese inspections of some
10 U.S. mills and facilities interested in exporting rice to China to
demonstrate their compliance with the complex U.S.-China phytosanitary
protocol.
"What is still not 100 percent clear is whether China has
published the complete list of all the U.S. facilities approved to ship to
China," said Bobby Hanks, Chair of USA Rice's International Trade Policy
Committee and a Louisiana miller. "We will be looking in the days
ahead to USDA and the U.S. Trade Representative for clarification to make sure
that all approved U.S. facilities are eligible. We of course are looking
for the first confirmed rice sale to China. This important day for the
U.S. rice industry is the result of the trade policy leadership of the Trump
administration and the commitment of Secretary Perdue to open new markets for
U.S. agriculture," concluded Hanks.
S.Korea seeks to buy 45,258 T of rice for
May arrival, buys 3,000 T
·
·
SEOUL, Jan 3 (Reuters) - South Korea is seeking to buy 45,258 tonnes of non-glutinous brown
rice for arrival in May via tenders, and bought 3,000 tonnes of short glutinous rice on Dec. 27
from China, state-run Korea Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade Corp said on its website. www.at.or.kr
Registration for the tenders will close at 3 pm (0600 GMT) on Jan. 4 and electronic bidding
will be held from 10 am (0100 GMT) to 11 am on Jan. 7.
Details of rice tenders are as follows:
TONNES(M/T) GRAIN TYPE ARRIVAL/PORT
24,147 Brown medium May 31/Mokpo
11,111 Brown medium May 31/Gwangyang
10,000 Brown medium May 31/Busan
* Note: The agency is seeking U.S. No.3 standard for all tendered products.
Details of purchased short glutinous rice tenders are as follows:
TONNES(M/T) PRICE($/T) ORIGIN/SUPPLIER ARRIVAL/PORT
1,000 921.30 China/Posco Daewoo Corp Mar 31/Busan
1,000 930.00 China/Sing Song Co. Apr 1-30/Busan
1,000 923.10 China/Posco Daewoo Corp Apr 1-30/Busan
(Reporting by Jeongmin Kim; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)
JANUARY 3, 2019 / 8:03 AM / 2 DAYS
AGO
Rice stock at 2.1 mln tonnes at
end-2018 - Indonesia Bulog
1 MIN READ
JAKARTA, Jan 3 (Reuters) -
* Indonesia state food procurement
agency Bulog said on Thursday it had 2.1 million tonnes of rice stock at the
end of 2018, after procuring 3.2 million tonnes of rice equivalent domestically
during the year.
* The agency procured rice and
unhulled rice from local suppliers and imports. On top of the 3.2 million
tonnes domestic procurement, Bulog’s 2018 import were estimated at 1.84 million
tonnes.
* At the end of the year, Bulog said
it also has stocks of about 477,000 tonnes of white sugar
* Bulog also had 5,800 tonnes of
buffalo meat stock at 2018-end (Reporting by Bernadette Christina Munthe
Writing by Fransiska Nangoy)
India rice rates ease on falling rupee,
demand; Thai harvest to augment supply
JANUARY 3, 2019 / 3:31 PM
·
BENGALURU (Reuters) - Rice export
prices in India eased from a four-month high this week due to a depreciation of
the rupee and sluggish demand, while Thai traders expect prices to drop over
the coming weeks as supplies start to arrive from the new season crop amid flat
demand.
A farmer spreads fertilizer in his rice field on the outskirts of
Ahmedabad, India, August 30, 2016. REUTERS/Amit Dave/Files
India’s 5 percent broken
parboiled variety was quoted around $376-$383 per tonne this week, compared
with $378-$384 last week.
“Prices are moderating due to a
weak rupee but still demand from African countries is weak,” said an exporter
based at Kakinada in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.
The rupee fell to a two-week low
on Thursday, increasing exporters’ margin from overseas sales.
Export prices in India shot up in
the second half of last month after the central state of Chhattisgarh, a
leading rice producer, raised the minimum paddy buying price.
In neighbouring Bangladesh, rice
imports slowed to 106,000 tonnes in July-December due to the imposition of a
tax in June, data from the food ministry showed. The country imported a record
3.9 million tonnes of rice in the last financial year that ended in June 2018.
The south Asian country, which
emerged as a major importer of the grain in 2017 after floods damaged crops,
imposed a 28 percent duty to support its farmers after local production
revived.
In Thailand, benchmark 5-percent
broken rice was quoted at $380-$400 per tonne, free on board Bangkok, slightly
widening from $380-$390 last week as the baht strengthened against the dollar.
Traders said demand for Thai rice
had been flat this new year and that supplies from the new harvest would likely
bring down prices over the next few weeks.
December to January is usually
the rice harvest season in Thailand, but this time there has been some delay in
harvesting in some parts of the country.
“We are now expecting supply from
the new harvest to enter the market in early February, so that could affect
rice prices this month,” a Bangkok-based trader said.
In Vietnam, rates for 5 percent
broken rice fell to $370-$375 a tonne from $385 a week earlier due to weak
demand.
“This year is forecast to be a
difficult year for Vietnamese rice exporters due to weaker demand, along with
China’s move to impose technical barriers on shipments from Vietnam,” a trader
based in Ho Chi Minh City said.
China has put a cap on the number
of Vietnamese companies eligible to export rice to China at 21, and Vietnam is
asking China to add more firms to the list, reported the Nong Nghiep Vietnam
newspaper.
Government data released last
week showed Vietnam’s rice exports in 2018 rose 4.6 percent to 6.09 million
tonnes. Rice export revenue in the year rose 16 percent to $3.05 billion.
“I think it’s time for Vietnamese
farmers to reduce their rice growing area and turn parts of their rice fields
into fishing farms,” said another trader.
Reporting by Panu Wongcha-um in
Bangkok, Khanh Vu in Hanoi, Ruma Paul in Dhaka and Rajendra Jadhav in Mumbai;
Editing by Subhranshu Sahu
India rice
rates ease on falling rupee, demand
12:00 AM, January 04, 2019
A
farmer sprinkles fertiliser in a rice field on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.
Photo: Reuters/File
Reuters,
Bengaluru
Rice export prices in India eased
from a four-month high this week due to a depreciation of the rupee and
sluggish demand, while Thai traders expect prices to drop over the coming weeks
as supplies start to arrive from the new season crop amid flat demand.
India's 5 percent broken parboiled
variety was quoted around $376-$383 per tonne this week, compared with
$378-$384 last week.
“Prices are moderating due to a
weak rupee but still demand from African countries is weak,” said an exporter
based at Kakinada in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.
The rupee fell to a two-week low on
Thursday, increasing exporters' margin from overseas sales.
Export prices in India shot up in
the second half of last month after the central state of Chhattisgarh, a
leading rice producer, raised the minimum paddy buying price.
In neighbouring Bangladesh, rice
imports slowed to 106,000 tonnes in July-December due to the imposition of a
tax in June, data from the food ministry showed. The country imported a record
3.9 million tonnes of rice in the last financial year that ended in June 2018.
The south Asian country, which
emerged as a major importer of the grain in 2017 after floods damaged crops,
imposed a 28 percent duty to support its farmers after local production
revived.
In Thailand, benchmark 5-percent
broken rice was quoted at $380-$400 per tonne, free on board Bangkok, slightly
widening from $380-$390 last week as the baht strengthened against the dollar.
Traders said demand for Thai rice
had been flat this new year and that supplies from the new harvest would likely
bring down prices over the next few weeks.
December to January is usually the
rice harvest season in Thailand, but this time there has been some delay in
harvesting in some parts of the country.
“We are now expecting supply from
the new harvest to enter the market in early February, so that could affect
rice prices this month,” a Bangkok-based trader said.
In Vietnam, rates for 5 percent
broken rice fell to $370-$375 a tonne from $385 a week earlier due to weak
demand.
“This year is forecast to be a
difficult year for Vietnamese rice exporters due to weaker demand, along with
China's move to impose technical barriers on shipments from Vietnam,” a trader
based in Ho Chi Minh City said.
China has put a cap on the number
of Vietnamese companies eligible to export rice to China at 21, and Vietnam is
asking China to add more firms to the list, reported the Nong Nghiep Vietnam
newspaper.
Government data released last week
showed Vietnam's rice exports in 2018 rose 4.6 percent to 6.09 million tonnes.
Rice export revenue in the year rose 16 percent to $3.05 billion. “I think it's
time for Vietnamese farmers to reduce their rice growing area and turn parts of
their rice fields into fishing farms,” said another trader.
Scientists aim to fix a genetic "glitch" in
soybeans so that they photosynthesize more efficiently. | REUTERS
Researchers say breakthrough in plant
engineering could boost productivity and feed millions more people
THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION
- JAN 4, 2019
ROME - A new process that adjusts the way plants turn sunlight into
energy could boost the yields of many staple crops by 40 percent, potentially
feeding hundreds of millions more people, American researchers said Thursday.Crops
such as rice, wheat and soybeans, as well as fruits and vegetables, have a
natural “glitch” in the way they photosynthesize that causes them to use up
energy and resources.
“The annual loss in production
from wheat and soybean in Midwestern United States … is enough to feed roughly
200 million more people from this area alone,” said Paul South, a molecular
biologist and lead author of a report in the journal Science.
Scientists from the University of
Illinois and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture Research Service
inserted genes from bacteria, green algae and other plants into tobacco plants,
changing how they process sunlight.
They tested and compared three
genetic variations and found that the most successful one saved enough energy
and resources to increase productivity by 40 percent in real-world conditions.
In more than two years of field
studies, the genetically engineered tobacco plants developed faster and put out
more leaves and stems than plants that weren’t modified, researchers said.
The photosynthesis process is
“nearly identical in plants, so we expect that benefits observed in tobacco
will result in changes to food crops,” said South.
Efforts are now underway to
transplant these findings to boost yields of potatoes, cowpeas, soybeans and
rice, he added.
“It takes 10 to 15 years for
technologies like this to undergo rigorous regulatory approval process, which examines
engineered crops for health and environmental impacts. Thus, it is all the more
urgent to invest in these types of technologies today,” said South.
The study is part of an
international project to boost global food production sustainably. Funders include
the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the British government.
Experts, however, say increased
production of nutrient-rich foods, not just staple crops, is crucial to tackle
the global malnutrition crisis, which has left 1 in 8 adults obese while 1 in 9
people are hungry.
“Well, we need more of
everything. The population alone is almost inevitably going up to 10 billion
and people are eating richer (diets),” said Timothy Searchinger, lecturer at
Princeton University and senior fellow at the World Resources Institute.
So the latest findings provide
“important, promising work as it may open up new ways to expand crop yields,”
said Searchinger, who authored a recent report on sustainable food systems.
“Lots more work to be done … but
glad the researchers have started focusing on some important C3 crops,” he
added.
The term “C3 crops” refer to most
major food crops that uses the C3 photosynthesis process. Crops that use a
different form of photosynthesis are maize, sugarcane and sorghum.
Unlike many technological
innovations in agriculture, which come with costly intellectual property
rights, researchers say smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast
Asia would have royalty-free access to these breakthroughs.
Smallholder farmers managing between
1 to 10 hectares (2.5 to 25 acres) of land provide up to 80 percent of the food
supply in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa but many are also extremely poor,
according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.
Agriculture
contribution and problems in Pakistan
January 4, 2019 2019-01-04T10:51:30+00:00
Jaffar Iqbal
Welcome! I am passionate about Agriculture and food
security, Graduated in Agriculture. I love to work in the field of Agronomy and
sustainable farming.
The Agriculture sector uninterrupted engages in recreation of
Pakistanis economy since independence. In the early time, it considered a
dominant sector but due to the declining its performance due to the political,
social, environmental and climate conditions its production yield goes down
gradually and now it is the second largest sector in Pakistan.
It accounting for over 21 percent of GDP, 45 percent of total
labor force engaged with this sector. Around 63 percent of country population
live in rural areas is indirectly or directly linked with this sector for
their livelihood. Agriculture sector have Strong linkage with the rest of the
economy that is unnoticed in statistics.
While on the Other hand, it is the primary supplier of raw
materials to downstream industry, that contributing significantly to Pakistan’s export;
it is the largest market for industrial manufactured goods such as pesticides,
fertilizers, tractors and agriculture equipment’s.
Predictor variable comprises five sub-sectors include Major, Minor
crops, livestock’s, fisheries and forestry. Major crops consist of cotton,
rice, wheat and sugarcane etc. and contribute 6.5% solely to the GDP. Cotton is the
main non-food crop that is used as a raw material for the textile industry.
Pakistan is the fourth largest producer of cotton.
Rice and Wheat are the major food crop out of which rice is also
one of the main export items of the country. Sugarcane is another important
crop grown for sugar and sugar related products. Minor crops consist of oil
seeds, vegetables, pulses, chilies and other small crops. Oil seed crops
include cottonseeds, rapeseed/mustard, sunflower and canola etc.
Role of Agriculture in Economic
Development
Agriculture have great role in economic development and
prosperity. Following are some important contributions of agriculture as;
- Contribution
to National Income
- Source of
Food Supply
- Pre-Requisite
for Raw Material
- Provision
of Surplus
- Shift of
Manpower:
- Creation
of Infrastructure:
- Relief
from Shortage of Capital:
- Helpful to
Reduce Inequality
- Based on
Democratic Notions
- Create
Effective Demand
- Helpful in
Phasing out Economic Depression:
- Source of
Foreign Exchange for the Country
- Contribution
to Capital Formation:
- Employment
Opportunities for Rural People:
- Extension
of Market for Industrial Output
Role of Agriculture in GDP of
Pakistan
Current GDP of Pakistan is 305 billion. Contribution of
major crops in agriculture sector is about to be 25.6 %
and contribution of major crops in GDP is almost 5.4% according
to the economic survey of Pakistan. Wheat contributes approximately 10.3%
in agriculture. Sugarcane is also a cash crop and food crop.Agriculture
accounts for 18.9 % of GDP and employed bulk of the total work force.
Agriculture sector recorded a growth of 3.46 percent in FY 2017 as compared to
the growth of 0.27 percent last year. The crops sub sector comprises of 37.22
percent of agriculture sector and is the basic driver of growth of the
agriculture sector as well as GDP.
Problems in Agriculture
of Pakistan
Agriculture is the backbone of Pakistan’s economic and facing a
cyclones of problems in Pakistan as;
- Lack of
Modern Agriculture technology
- Poor
Financial Position of Farmer
- Limited
Cultivable Area
- Waterlogging
and salinity
- Slow
Growth of Allied Product
- Low per
Hectare Yield
- Inadequate
Infrastructure
- Uneconomic
Land holdings
- Old method
of Production
- Inadequate
supply of Agriculture Inputs
- Lack of
irrigation Facilities
- Inadequate
Agriculture Research Center
- Problem of
Land Reforms
- Defective
Land Reforms
- Subsistence
Farming
- Low
Cropping intensity
- Improper
Crop Rotation
- Various
Plant diseases and Natural Calamities
Adaptive Research Farm, Rahim yar Khan
Basmati
rice export witnesses 19pc growth
July 30, 2018
ISLAMABAD - About 520,759 metric tons of
basmati rice worth US$ 540.231 million were exported during the period from
July-June, 2017-18 as against the exports of 496,263 metric tons valuing US$
453.441 million of Corresponding period of last year.
During the period under review, the exports of
basmati rice witnessed 19.14 percent growth when the quantity was compared with
the same period of last year, according the data of Pakistan Bureau of
Statistics.
Meanwhile about 4.106 million tons of rice
worth US$ 2.073 billion had been exported during 12 months of last financial
year as compared the exports of 3.523 million tons valuing US$ 1.606 billion of
the corresponding period of last years, registering 26.78 percent growth during
the period under review.
During the period from July-June, the country
earned US$ 1.496 billion by exporting rice other then basmati as about 3.585
million tons of other rice exported as against the exports of 3.053 million
tons worth US$ 1.153 billion of same period last year.
It may be recalled that food group exports from
the country recorded about 29.28 percent growth as country earned US$ 4.797
billion exporting different food commodities, which were recorded at US$ 3.711
billion in the same period of last year.
The other commodities which recorded positive
growth in their exports during the period under review included fish and fish
products by 14.57 percent, fruits and vegetables by 5.8 percent and 30.56
percent respectively.
During the period under review fish and fish
products worth US$ 451.026 million, fruit and vegetables US$ 400.237 million
and 241.426 million respectively were exported.
On the other hand country spent US$ 6.185
billion on the import of food during last financial year, which was recorded at
US$ 6.143 billion during the same period of last year, showing an increase of
0.68 percent, the data added.
During last year country consumed about 183,321
metric tons of tea costing US$ 551.881 million as compared the 194.833 metric
tons and US$ 523.790 million of same period of last year.
https://nation.com.pk/30-Jul-2018/basmati-rice-export-witnesses-19pc-growth
Unlimited rice imports to bring
in over 1 million tons 
Louise
Maureen Simeon (The Philippine Star) - January 5, 2019 -
12:00am
166 private traders apply for out-quota shipments
MANILA, Philippines — As the
Philippines moves toward the unlimited importation of rice, 166 firms have
applied to bring in one million metric tons of the commodity under the
out-quota scheme, based on the updated list released by the National Food
Authority.
The rice will be sourced from
Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar and Taiwan.
The interagency National Food
Authority Council (NFAC) allowed the unlimited importation of rice to further
stabilize market prices.
Out-quota allocation means that
traders can apply for any volume of imported rice they want to bring into the
country.
Of the initial volume, the
imports will be discharged in Manila, Subic, Cebu, Zamboanga City, Davao, La
Union, Tacloban and Cagayan de Oro.
The NFA will continuously process
and approve applications of private traders.
Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel
Piñol said importers could only bring in 25 percent brokens but the latest
terms of reference for the out-quota scheme allows traders to import 25 percent
brokens or better.
All rice to be imported will be
levied with a 35 percent tariff for ASEAN countries and 50 percent for
non-ASEAN.
Rice import allocation of
eligible importers must be loaded upon the approval of the sanitary and
phytosanitary import clearance by the Bureau of Plant Industry and payment of
the required tentative advance Customs duty.
The out-quota imports will add to
the recently bid out 500,000 MT via open tender and the 203,000 MT
government-to-government scheme.
The agri chief had allayed
possible fears of flooding of imported rice in the market.
“I don’t think that’s going to
happen because when the importers feel there is so much rice stocks in the market
and prices go down to a level where they cannot make money anymore then
they will not import,” Piñol earlier said.
“It will be the absorptive
capacity of the market that will set the cap. And no businessman in his right
mind will import rice if there is no market,” he added.
https://www.philstar.com/business/2019/01/05/1882337/unlimited-rice-imports-bring-over-1-million-tons
