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This month the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)
estimates that theWorld
Rice Production 2016/2017will
be 481.5 million metric tons, around 2.29 million tons less than the previous
month's projection. Rice Production last year (*) was 472.27 million tons. This
year's 481.5 estimated million tons could represent an increase of 9.24 million
tons or a 1.96% inrice
productionaround
the globe.
Indonesia`s
rice stocks enough to last until May 2017
Jumat, 9 Desember 2016 08:47 WIB |
Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The Indonesian
government has assured that the country has enough rice stocks to meet its
consumption needs until May 2017.The rice stocks are being held by traders and
state logistic agency (Bulog), Trade Minister Enggartiasto Lukita said here on
Thursday.The traders could keep the commodity for more than three months,
provided they have registered their warehouses, he noted.
"The (rice) stocks are enough to last till the next year. The stocks are
being held by traders and Bulog. Traders are prepared to augment their rice
stocks once the harvest comes in, but they should not be accused of hoarding
the commodity," he explained.The government actually put in place a price
control instrument through Presidential Regulation No. 71 of 2015, concerning
pricing and storing of foodstuffs, he disclosed.
As of now, traders are holding an estimated 15-18 million tons of rice stocks,
enough to meet needs until May 2017, while Buolg now holds 1.75 million tons.The
government claimed that as a result, domestic rice supplies have been
secured.(*)
More than 67.95 lakh metric tonnes (MT) of
paddy have arrived in the mandis of Haryana so far compared to about 61.91 lakh
MT in the corresponding period of last year, an official said today. Out of the
total arrival this year, government agencies have procured about 53.27 lakh MT
and over 14.67 lakh MT has been procured by millers and dealers, a spokesman of
Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Department said.
The department had procured over 22.62 lakh MT
of paddy and HAFED has procured more than 18.35 lakh MT. He said the Haryana
Agro Industries Corporation has procured over 6.30 lakh MT of paddy, Haryana
Warehousing Corporation more than 5.67 lakh MT and Food Corporation of India
has procured 32,258 MT of paddy.
Regarding arrival of paddy in various districts
of the state, he said that a maximum of about 12.41 lakh MT of paddy has
arrived in the mandis of Karnal, followed by 11.71 lakh MT in Kurukshetra,
about 8.18 lakh MT in Kaithal and 7.31 lakh MT in Ambala. imilarly, 6.91 lakh
MT of paddy has arrived in the mandis of Fatehabad and 5.30 lakh MT in
Yamunanagar.
(This story has not been edited by Business
Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/haryana-paddy-arrival-jumps-116120900978_1.html
Rice price rise
helps increase real income by 0.11pc: Study
FE Report
Increase in rice prices helps raise real income by 0.11 per cent in the
country, a latest study has revealed.
The disclosure was made in a research styled
'Rice Prices and their Relationship to Growth and Development', conducted by
the think-tank Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS)
The research finding found its place in the
BIDS Research Almanac 2016, jointly authored by BIDS Director General Dr K A S
Murshid and Senior Research Fellow of the Institute Dr Mohammad Yunus.The paper
was presented by Dr Yunus at the first session of the concluding day of BIDS
Almanac 2016, held at a city hotel on Thursday. It was organised by the
Institute. Talking about rice prices and
their relationship with local growth and development, the research showed that
a 10 per cent hike in rice prices at farm, wholesale and retail levels, has
helped increase real income by 0.11 per cent in the country.
The research also showed that if rice prices
increase by 10 per cent, it causes rise in labour wages by 20 per cent.
The national Net Benefit Ratio (NBR) is 1.4 per
cent (if rice prices increase by 10 per cent), it said. Average income in Bangladesh will rise by
0.2 per cent in the long run while poverty rate will also fall slightly if rice
prices maintain usual rise, it said.The paper said such a hike (10 pc) in rice
prices even can reduce poverty rate to 31.23 per cent from 31.5 per cent.Dr
Murshid said, "We have to give up the old notion on increase in rice
prices that it could extend a blow."
"But we have to realise that hike in rice
prices to some extent has little impact over poverty eradication process; it
rather helps boost rural economy," he said.He said the price of rice
hasn't increased in last ten years in real terms. This means farmers are the
ultimate losers.A rice variety was sold at Tk 38-Tk 40 a kg in 2010. If its
price remain the same now, it indicates that the price of the product declined
in real term, he said.
Asked, he said the primary trading of paddy by
the farmer community will be included in the research in future which could
give more diverse scenario. The research
found that paddy covers 13 million farmers, 48 per cent of rural economy, 70
per cent of agricultural GDP and the cereal also meets two-thirds of calorie
needs of the nation.
BIDS former Director General Dr Quazi
Shahabuddin chaired the first session while farm economists Dr Mohammad A
Jabbar and Dr Sattar Mandol also spoke. Two
more papers related to vegetable and fruit production and their exports were
presented on the concluding day of the programme.
Eleven research papers were disseminated during
the two-day BIDS Almanac 2016 aiming to bring
stakeholders, and policymakers to research domain to boost
socio-economic development of the country, organisers said.
Could rice fields save
endangered salmon in the Sacramento Valley?
Robin Abcarian
It was, as the duck
hunters say, a bluebird day in the Sacramento Valley — sunny and warmish,
barely a cloud in the sky. I stood on the edge of a harvested rice field,
squinting into a drainage ditch. The water was maybe a foot deep.Suddenly, a
tail fin belonging to a salmon way too big for these shallows broke the
surface, then disappeared. Peering into the water, I could make out a male and
female, perhaps as large as 25 pounds. What on earth were winter-run Chinook
doing here, in a ditch next to a rice field, when they should be making their
way up the Sacramento River to their spawning grounds?
“They got lost,” said my guide, Jacob Katz, a
senior scientist with CalTrout, a nonprofit engaged in improving fish
populations. “They zigged when they should have zagged.”Miles southwest of
here, after swimming under the Golden Gate Bridge and through the Sacramento
Delta, these endangered fish made a wrong turn. Instead of bearing right in the
Sacramento River, they turned left into a system of agricultural drainage
canals and ended up many miles later in dead-end ditches like this. Each year,
despite rescue efforts of the Department of Fish and Wildlife, hundreds end up
dying, without spawning, at the edges of Sacramento Valley rice fields.Young
salmon heading downstream to the ocean have it even worse. If they survive to
the age of migration, the fast-moving Sacramento River provides them with
little food and refuge from predators. Other disasters befall them; in 2014 and
2015, most salmon eggs were wiped out
by high water temperatures in the river, a result of the drought and a
mechanical flaw in a temperature control device at Shasta Lake that was
supposed to release enough cold water to save them.
Tuesday,
I visited a couple of projects in the Sacramento Valley that are aimed at
helping salmon on both ends of the life cycle. They are collaborations between
farmers and environmentalists, two groups that are often at each other’s
throats in the never-ending battle over who is entitled to California’s precious
water supply.
“It’s just a blessing to work with these
people,” said second-generation rice farmer Bryce Lundberg, at a breakfast that
included Katz, farmers and officials from various water districts and state
agencies. “Our future is tied to the environment. The health of birds and fish
is tied to the health of farms.”
::
The environmental awakening of the Sacramento
Valley’s rice farmers was more or less forced upon them. Traditionally, farmers
burned the rice stubble left in their fields after harvest. But that cheap and
dirty practice was outlawed by the state in 1991.Many took to flooding their
fields to help the leftover rice straw decompose. This had the effect of
creating what scientists call “surrogate wetlands,” attractive to all manner of
ducks and geese whose populations had dramatically shrunk because their winter
habitat, the Sacramento Valley’s wetlands, had been engineered out of existence
with levees, canals and dams.All that human intervention had allowed farms and
cities to flourish, of course. But it was hell on birds and fish.
Transforming
hundreds of thousands of once-burnt acres into wetlands helped revive an
important migratory stop along the Pacific Flyway. It was good PR for farmers, who could
also charge duck hunters hefty fees for using their land. The ducks tend
to catch on quickly.“They hang out in the wildlife refuges during the day where
they can’t be hunted,” said Lewis Bair, general manager of Reclamation District
108, one of the state’s oldest water districts, as we drove along the edge of a
flooded rice field. “Then they move to these fields to eat after dark.”
Several years ago, scientists at UC Davis got
an idea: What if they figured out a way to get young salmon back into those
wetlands, too? Before all the levees and canals were built, juveniles would
come down the river from Redding, spilling over the banks into the flood plain
to fatten up for the treacherous journey to sea. Instead of being shunted down
the food-scarce Sacramento River as they are now, the fry could take some time
to bask in the shallow, bug-filled waters of the rice paddies.This experiment,
dubbed the Nigiri Project (after that
sushi favorite, salmon on rice), is in its fifth year, and is showing
promise. It’s still unclear, however, whether the “flood-plain
fatties” have a better chance of making it back to spawning grounds as adults.
“We’ve
done this with 5,000 or 10,000 fish, and there’s no way to recover enough of
them to draw scientific conclusions,” said Katz. He’d like to do it with half a
million fish, but has not been able to get permission from various government
agencies. “There are a lot of politics involved, and it’s sensitive.”
Last year, the Natural Resources Defense
Council filed a lawsuit against the federal Bureau of Reclamation and
Sacramento Valley rice farmers (whose water rights are nearly iron-clad) for
mismanaging water at the expense of the endangered Chinook.“There’s a line that
is being walked here,” Katz said. “Fish need water, and there needs to be
resolution about water rights and the Endangered Species Act. But in the
meantime, there’s lots of projects that are good for fish, good for the
environment and good for farmers. And it’s in everyone’s interest to build
those now.”
::
My last stop of the day was a construction
project on a private farm in the Yolo Bypass, a swath of farmland 40 miles long
and 3 miles wide between Davis and Sacramento that protects Sacramento
from severe flooding. Wallace Weir, a $13-million barrier, will allow for
improved flood control, but will also prevent adult salmon, like the ones I
saw, from straying to their deaths in drainage ditches. Reclamation
District 108 General Manager Lewis Bair at Wallace Weir in the Yolo Bypass. The
project will help with flood control and save endangered salmon that have
strayed from the Sacramento River into drainage canals.
Robin Abcarian / Los Angeles Times
Reclamation District 108 General Manager Lewis
Bair at Wallace Weir in the Yolo Bypass. The project will help with flood
control and save endangered salmon that have strayed from the Sacramento River
into drainage canals.Reclamation District 108 General Manager Lewis Bair at
Wallace Weir in the Yolo Bypass. The project will help with flood control and
save endangered salmon that have strayed from the Sacramento River into
drainage canals. (Robin Abcarian / Los Angeles Times)
The
day after my visit, Katz told me, he returned to the ditch to find salmon in
water so shallow, their backs were exposed. This makes them easy prey for river
otters, who gorge on the eggs and leave the carcasses for coyotes, vultures and
deer.When off-course salmon reach Wallace Weir, they will be directed into
a maze-like tank with a mechanical, perforated floor that will lift the
heavy adults up to biologists who will pluck them out of the water with slings
and load them into trucks for return to the Sacramento River.It’s not exactly a
sustainable way to save the salmon, but given that human intervention has
pushed them to the edge of extinction, it’s the least we can do for now.
PM
Lee learning about tissue culture techniques to clone and regenerate trees with
desirable traits at the Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory on Friday (Dec 9).PHOTO:
MCI
SINGAPORE - Prime Minister
Lee Hsien Loong gave a thumbs up to "Temasek Rice", a grain variety
made in Singapore, in a Facebook post on Saturday (Dec 10).He visited the
Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory, a non-profit research institute funded by
Temasek Trust, on Friday (Dec 9) and said in his post that he enjoyed
"learning about the lab's work, its focus on sustainability and on using
science to improve our environment and lives".Temasek Rice, which is the
first and only rice variety to be created and sold here, was launched at
Meidi-Ya supermarket in Liang Court in August this year.
QUEZON CITY, Dec. 10 - The Department of
Agriculture (DA) will have to focus programs on the commercialization of rice
seed production in the country by 2017.This was according to Agriculture
Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol during the inauguration of a modern rice seed
processing facility at the Philippine Rice Research Institute on December 6,
2016.Piñol likewise stressed the importance of good breeding materials in
achieving the food sufficiency.
“Good genetics and good farm management are two
factors the DA needs to focus on to be able to synch our strategies with the
vision of the President towards affordable and accessible food for every
Filipino,” he said.He noted that the government will have to improve rice
productivity thru the expansion of rice farmlands by at least one million
hectare next year.“To be able to achieve that dream, we have to provide more
good seeds for farmers,” Piñol added.
Piñol, together with PhilRice acting executive
director Dr. Sailila E. Abdula, led the inauguration of the $4-million
processing facility funded by the Korea International Cooperation Agency
(KOICA) thru the “Enhancing the Capacity of Production and Distribution of High
Quality Rice Seeds” program.The initiative includes the establishment of the
facility, providing of equipment, and trainings for the personnel.The 1,000m3
facility aims to lessen the processing time and certification process for rice
seeds. The structure also aims to encourage farmers to use high-quality seeds.
“By using the right seeds, a ten percent
increase on farmers’ rice yield every year is possible,” Piñol noted.The
facility is composed of two recirculating dryers and two reversible dryers,
which can dry 6 and 4 tons seeds per batch, respectively. It also has two seed
cleaners and a gravity separator for sorting seeds with a capacity of two tons
per hour. It has a cold room, an office, and a generator room.Piñol seeks to
set up the same concept of facility in other rice producing areas in the
country such as Davao and Soccsksargen region. (DA
The
unpredictability of floods, chronic pollution issues, shifting climate norms
and interference caused by Chinese dams are creating severe woes for Vietnamese
farmers growing rice, a staple crop of the Southeast Asian country’s diet.
(Associated
By
James Borton - Special to The Washington Times- - Wednesday, December 7, 2016
CAN THO, Vietnam — Overloaded trucks barrel down the National
Highway from Can Tho, Vietnam’s fourth-largest city and the largest city in the
southern Mekong Delta, rumbling past industrial campuses and export-processing
zones, kicking up dust from a newly landscaped Chinese paper and pulp mill.
Across the road, the delta’s dense jungle and mangroves spill over its banks.
For generations rice farmers harvesting their shining emerald
paddies have relied on the Lower Mekong’s thousands of river arteries to water
their crop, but today a perfect storm is building, one that is challenging
their livelihoods. Nguyen Hien Thien, a 61-year-old rice farmer, summarizes the
problem succinctly in a loud voice: “Too much water and, more often, too
little.” The unpredictability of the rains, coupled with an alarming rise in
pollution levels, is transforming life here.The delta formed by the Mekong
River rises on the Tibetan plateau and flows 2,600 miles before dividing into
the Cuu Long (“Nine-tailed Dragon”) and then spills into the South China Sea.
Despite the abundance of water that could supply the area, the delta’s network
of rice paddies, marshes and canals is dramatically impeded either by too much
water in the flood season or too little during the low flow. An agricultural
wonder, the Mekong Delta produces half of Vietnam’s rice, but now faces growing
environmental challenges.
Upstream dams built by China are a prime culprit, though
changing weather, saltwater intrusion, biodiversity depletion, rising sea
levels and industrial pollution are all contributing to the mortal threat to
the ecology of the delta, historically the fertile rice bowl for over 20
million people in southern Vietnam and a major contributor to the country’s
vast rice export business, which now holds a fifth of the total world export
market.The delta, a low-level plain less than 10 feet above sea level, is
crisscrossed by canals and river systems where boats, homes and floating
markets coexist. Some families still recall that South Vietnam’s delta proved
to be a final quagmire for Vietnamese and Americans who fought and died there.Hai
Thach, a tired-looking 65-year-old farmer, watches like a sentinel as the
salinity of the water on his land rises — land he has cultivated since he was a
boy for rice, coconuts, oranges and mandarins
New Delhi, Dec 7, 2016: Back in 1966,
Nekkanti Subha Rao, a farmer in India’s southern state of Andhra Pradesh
planted a semi-dwarf rice variety developed by the International Rice Research
Institute on 1,000 hectares of land.
Crossbred from a tall variety in Indonesia
and a dwarf variety in China, IR8 was the world’s first high-yielding rice and
is credited with having prevented famines and sparking the Green Revolution in
rice in Asia.NewsGram brings to you latest new stories in India.As India and
the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines celebrate the 50th
anniversary of what came to be known as the Miracle Rice, farmer Rao, now 80
years old, recalls the wonder of the moment when he harvested an astonishing
7.5 tons per hectare.
“Never
before,” he said. “Every farmer feeling very, very, very happy, happy. 100
percent success.”In the 1960s and 1970s, when India and several Asian countries
grappled with food shortages, IR8 and varieties that followed helped triple
rice output in Asia and fended off the specter of widespread hunger.“It
transformed agriculture, which averted the perennial food crises that happened
in those years, those decades. It saved millions of lives,” said Dr. Nafees
Meah, IRRI’s regional representative for South Asia.
After India,
IR8 went on to be planted across a host of Asian countries, such as the Philippines,
Vietnam and Cambodia, where rice is the staple food for most people.In all
these countries, say agriculture scientists, it did not just boost yields. The
shorter length of the crop made it sturdier and less prone to collapsing before
harvest time. And as it took less time to mature compared to traditional rice
strains, it allowed farmers to cultivate more than one crop on the same land.
“It reduced
the duration quite significantly and it continues to do so. Vietnam right now,
in many parts of Mekong Delta where water is there, they grow three crops a
year, primarily because of shorter duration varieties,” said Samarendu Mohanty,
Head of Social Sciences at IRRI in Philippines.
Mature rice fields of Peta, IR8 and DGWG
varieties. VOA
In about two
decades, the IR8 made way to a host of other high yield varieties, but it is
the parental strain for many of these. Recalling its phenomenal contribution,
Mohanty said that in India alone, it is estimated to have contributed $1.3
billion annually to the rice sector.Go to NewsGram and check out news related
to political current issues
But ensuring
food security is no longer the only challenge for Asia – a continent that is
far more affluent than it was 50 years ago. At the same time, malnourishment
continues to haunt millions of poor in the region, especially in South Asia.
And everywhere, farmers are battling climate change.“Developing new varieties
that are higher yielding and more nutritious, but ones that have less of an
environmental footprint, ones that require less water, fertilizer, pesticide
and ones that actually have reduced greenhouse gas emissions,” said Rod Wing,
an American scientist at IRRI in Manila as he outlines the challenges of the
21st century.
In recent
years, new varieties that are more resistant to droughts and floods are showing
promising results in east India and Bangladesh, a delta country where flash
floods used to submerge or wash away crops.“With these new varieties, we have
got a real opportunity,” Meah said. “It has been adopted by millions of farmers,
so they see the benefits of it. And it’s a real improvement for their
livelihoods as well.”To improve nutritional levels, a genetically engineered
strain has been developed to address Vitamin A deficiency that kills many under
the age of five. On the other end of the spectrum, as Asia copes with what are
sometimes called diseases of affluence and witnesses an explosion in the
incidence of diabetes, scientists are developing varieties with low glycemic
index, which release energy slowly.But the core challenge of productivity that
IR8 sparked has still not gone away.
“The big
question is how do we solve the 10 billion people question? That is, how are we
going to feed three more billion people on the planet by 2050? It is a huge,
daunting task,” said Wing at IRRI, pointing out that rice is the staple diet of
more than half the world.And while farmers are harvesting higher and higher
yields, they continue to battle other problems.“Cost of cultivation very, very
high now. Labor cost is high,” rued farmer Subha Rao from his home in Andhra
Pradesh. (VOA)
