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GLOBAL BASMATI RICE MARKET 2020 TRENDS ANALYSIS AND (COVID-19) EFFECT ANALYSIS | KEY PLAYERS MARKET WITH COVID-19 IMPACT ANALYSIS | IN DEPTH INSIGHT | GROWTH & RESEARCH FINDING TO 2026
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Indonesian protesters
push repeal of Job Creation Law
Members of Indonesian trade unions protest against the
government’s proposed labor reforms in a controversial ‘jobs creation’ bill in
Tangerang, on the outskirts of Jakarta on Monday. (Reuters)
Short Url
https://arab.news/4udyp
Updated
07 October 2020
SHINTA EKA PUSPASARI
October
07, 202000:36
1140
Lawmakers
say move will woo investors; experts argue it will trigger job insecurity,
curtail workers’ rights
JAKARTA: Angry
Indonesian activists took to the streets on Tuesday, a day after parliament
rushed to pass into law the controversial Omnibus bill on job creation, which government
officials say will lure more investments to the country, but protestors argue
will promote a “contemporary form of slavery.”
“Both the House of
Representatives and the government have lost their conscience and have not
taken into account the fate of the people by passing the bill,” Nining Elitos,
chairwoman of Indonesian Trade Union Congress Alliance (KASBI) Confederation,
told Arab News.
Other activists slammed the
Job Creation Law (JCL), reasoning that it would trigger job insecurity and deny
workers their rights as guaranteed under the 2003 Manpower Law.
For months, trade unions
have raised concerns that the new regulation will remove an obligation for
employers to pay a severance package to employees who had been laid off and
would enable companies to extend working contracts indefinitely, compared to a
maximum of two annual extensions as per the previous law.
“KASBI members and other
unions under the Gebrak coalition will continue to protest against the law,”
Elitos said.
Meanwhile, Indonesian Legal
Aid Institute Chairwoman Asfinawati told Arab News that the NGO and other civil
society organizations were driving a motion of no confidence against parliament
to reject the new legislation.
“We are taking a precedent
set following the passing of Law No. 25 in 1997 on manpower. The law has never
been effectively implemented due to a wide-scale public repudiation,”
Asfinawati said on Tuesday.
After years of rejection by
workers and employers, the 1997 law was eventually revoked in 2002 and replaced
with the 2003 Manpower Law.
While admitting that the
movement may not be successful, Asfinawati said that activists would continue
to express their discontent against the JCL, which leaned toward a
“contemporary form of slavery.”
“A judicial review to
challenge the law with the Constitutional Court is an eventuality, but rights
groups are in no rush to do so,” she added.
Demonstrators from
Tangerang, Banten and Bekasi, West Java, were prevented from entering the
capital Jakarta by police on Monday.
However, another Gebrak
activist, Ilhamsyah, told Arab News on Tuesday that protests had broken out in
several areas across the country, including in Indonesia’s busiest port,
Tanjung Priok, in North Jakarta, and Batam, Riau Islands — a free-trade zone
located an hour away on a boat from Singapore.
“The rallies will continue
until Thursday,” Ilhamsyah added.
The JCL, which amends parts
of 79 existing laws, including the Labor Law, was ratified three days ahead of
schedule with Achmad Baidowi, deputy chairman of the House’s legislative
body.
He justified the abrupt
change of plan due to the rapid spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19)
within the House of Representatives.
“We agreed that as the
spread of COVID-19 in the parliament is accelerating, we must push forward the
closing of current hearing sessions,” Baidowi told reporters in Jakarta.
During Monday’s meeting,
Deputy Speaker Azis Syamsuddin said that 18 House lawmakers, staff and
employees had contracted the disease, adding to the total of 307,120 cases and
11,253 deaths reported from across the country.
The JCL is one of President
Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s key priorities in his second and final term, with
Coordinating Minister for the Economy Airlangga Hartarto saying on Monday that
it would strengthen protection of workers and improve investment
opportunities.
He added that it provides
the legal basis for the government to increase its “contribution to the
national employment insurance program and take measures to streamline business
licensing procedures.”
Economists, however, are
not so convinced.
Some expressed hesitation
that the JCL is simply the panacea that the government needs to woo investors,
particularly amid the pandemic.
“Tackling the pandemic
should be the focus now…but the government was busy pushing for ratification of
the Omnibus law. In the meantime, the pandemic has diminished Indonesia’s
attractiveness as it reduced public purchasing power and disrupted mobility and
production capacity,” Bhima Yudhistira Adhinegara, a researcher with the think
tank Institute for Development of Economics and Finance, told Arab News on
Tuesday.
He added that investors’
confidence in Indonesia is “currently very low” due to the government’s poor
handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The ratification of the
law may already backfire and further bring down investors’ confidence as it
leads to new uncertainties. It is likely that investors will prolong their
wait-and-see stance as hundreds of regulations must be amended in accordance
with the new legislation,” he said.
Others argue that the JCL
could pose new risks to the country’s tropical forests.
On Tuesday, Arie Rompas,
forest campaign team leader at Greenpeace Indonesia, highlighted the weaker
penalties in the JCL for forest concession holders, which “cause land and
forest fires and other issues surrounding a planned centralization of forest
licensing, which is against Indonesia’s regional autonomy rules.”
In a strongly worded
statement on Monday, rights watchdog Amnesty International (AI) Indonesia
called it a “catastrophic” move.
“The passage of the Omnibus
law exposes the authorities’ lack of commitment to human rights,” AI Indonesia
Executive Director Usman Hamid said in a statement on Monday, adding that the
“catastrophic law” would harm workers’ wallets, job security and their human
rights.
He also added that the
government failed to involve labor unions and civil society groups in the JCL’s
drafting process.
“The law threatens human
rights and will have a regressive effect on human rights in Indonesia, namely
on the right to work and rights at work. This may amount to a breach of the
prohibition of retrogression under the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights,” he said.
PHILIPPINES SEEKS TWO-MONTH HALT ON
RICE IMPORTS TO SUPPORT PRICES
10/6/2020
MANILA,
Oct 6 (Reuters) - The Philippines' Department of Agriculture on Tuesday asked
local importers to stop importing rice between October and November to support
domestic prices during the country's main wet-season harvest.
The world's biggest rice importer, which buys mainly from
neighbouring Vietnam, is now expected to purchase around 2.3 million tonnes of
its staple food this year, Agriculture Secretary William Dar told reporters.
The Philippines' rice purchases last year were estimated at a
record-high 2.9 million tonnes after it lifted a two-decade-old restriction on
the size of imports.
The government expects year-end rice stockpiles to be the biggest
in 10 years.
Dar said almost 2 million tonnes of rice imports had arrived this
year and about 300,000 tonnes more may be shipped in before year end.
The domestic rice harvest in the second half will be
"substantial", he said, with the main harvest expected between June
and November.
To support prices amid rising domestic stockpiles and the influx
of imports, the government is also now "massively" buying unmilled
rice from local farmers for buffer stocking, Dar said.
The Philippines' rice inventory is closely monitored by rice
producers and traders in Vietnam and other top exporters such as Thailand and
India.
Asia's rice export prices eased last week in most hubs on
lacklustre demand, with fresh supplies expected to be a further drag. Activity
in the export market was muted with the absence of buyers from the Philippines,
according to traders.
(Reporting by Enrico Dela Cruz Editing by Ed Davies)
It is time for the annual floods in the
Mekong Delta, but the flooding season these days is more a cherished memory
than a practical phenomenon.
One day in
mid-September Cao Van Bi, 50, was rowing a boat with his wife across a paddy
field that had been partially flooded.
All over the
field, in Phu Hoi, a rural commune in An Giang Province’s An Phu District,
traps had been set up to catch fish.
That morning
the catch was 2.5 kilograms of carp and five kilograms of other fish and
shrimp.
In previous
years, during the flooding season, Bi would have got dozens of kilograms worth
of fish every day, but these days it never exceeds 10 kg.
Cao Van Bi and his wife
collect the fish they catch in one morning in mid September, 2020. Photo by
VnExpress/Hoang Nam.
The reason
is that the annual flooding of Vietnam's Mekong Delta from the upstream Mekong
before reaching the sea no longer occurs.
Not far
away, in Vinh Hoi Dong Commune in An Phu, Phan Van Lang, 54, was standing in
front of his house.
Since they
live in an area hit by annual flooding, Lang and his neighbors have their
houses built well above the ground. His house is nearly three meters in the air
with a flight of the stairs leading up from the road. In 2000, for instance,
the floodwater almost reached the house. But ever since the flooding levels
have kept decreasing.
Pointing at
the road in front of his house, he says the entire road would have been under
one meter of water at this time of the year but this year, the water has not
even reached the road.
Hung Dien
Commune in Long An Province's Tan Hung District, 80 km (50 miles) away, has
been witnessing the clearest change.
In the past
its paddy fields would have waters reaching waist high and be filled with water
lilies and boats would be the only means of getting around.
That scene
now exists only in the memories of seniors.
Bay De, 53,
who has been fishing for more than 30 years, recalls floods when catching up to
200 kg of various kinds of fish every day and earning a million dong ($40) was
a "piece of cake."
For several
weeks now he has not caught any fish. He spends almost every day drinking tea
and chatting with neighbors in his thatched house.
Fifty
kilometers away, Tran Van Thanh, 58, of Tan Lap Commune in Moc Hoa District is
fixing traps for catching crabs.
He has been
doing this for dozens of years, a job that has ensured a decent livelihood, but
that has changed.
"I used
to set up more than 600 traps during the flood season, but only a few tens of
them these days because the flood waters are way too low and there are no crabs
to catch."
In the
neighboring province of Dong Thap, Nguyen Van Phuong, 42, of Tan Thanh A
Commune in Tan Hong District is watching the news on TV for possible
information about the floods, something he has been looking forward to for
several weeks now.
He has an
eight-hectare rice field and has been waiting for the floods to come so that he
could start sowing the winter-spring crop.
There was
heavy rain a few weeks ago, and water had filled up canals and then reached the
fields. Phuong, thinking the floods had finally arrived, hired people to till
the soil.
But soon a
scorching sun replaced the rains and water dropped, leaving the field dry and
cracked once again.
He says:
"I had spent VND750,000 ($32.44) per hectare, but that has been a wasted
effort. Now I have to wait for the floodwaters to come and do that all over
again."
In his
neighborhood, farmers are now worried that if the floods do not come or are
low, they would have to shell out money to pump water from canals into their
fields.
Rice farmers
in the delta have for generations depended on the floodwaters to come and
inundate their fields before sow seeds directly.
The Plain of
Reeds, a wetland straddling Long An and Dong Thap provinces, produces more than
two million tons of rice a year.
The floods
usually start coming in late July or early August and remain until November or
even later to bless the region with extraordinary fertility as they typically
deposit silt from upstream areas.
When they do
not come or arrive late, cropping and fishing activities are disrupted.
For several
years now they have been late or deficient, and experts have been blaming this
on climate change and the construction of a series of dams in the upstream
area.
According to
the National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting, this year’s
floodwater level in the delta will be only 55 percent of the long-term average,
which translates into a shortfall of 130 billion cubic meters.
It will be
15 percent lower than last year’s level and the lowest in a decade, it has
warned.
A rice field where floodwater
only reaches the roots of the rice plants that have already been harvested in
September, 2020. Photo by VnExpress/Hoang Nam.
Late last
year the highest water levels in the upstream areas of the delta were 1.12-2
meters lower than the long-term average and 1-1.65 meters lower than in the
previous year.
The delta
suffered the worst salinity levels and resultant freshwater shortage in 100
years but meteorologists warn things could get worse.
Tran Tan
Tai, deputy head of the agriculture department of Long An’s Tan Hung District,
says the water level in his hometown is currently 1.4 meters, or 80 centimeters
lower than a year ago.
"If
there are no floods, the fields will lack silt, and pathogens and wild grass
seeds will not be washed away, and farmers will have to spend more on pesticide
and fertilizers."
Meteorologists
expect the floods to come around the middle of this month, stay low and ebb
away quickly.
Those were
the days
Early one
morning in late September, Muoi, 64, of Tan Lap rides a motorbike to a wet
market two kilometers away from home. He returned after a while with a bag of
barb.
"All my
life I have seen fish all over the place every time it is the flooding season,
but now I have to go buy them... Isn’t it weird?"
Not far from
his home a neighbor had set up a lift net the previous night, but until around
noon the next day, when Muoi returned from the market, it had only around two
kilograms of fish.
Muoi can
never forget what it was like one or two decades ago: Every year when the flood
season arrived, water would be everywhere, covering the fields and even the
streets. People would be rowing boats, picking water lilies and river hemp,
both used to make specialty dishes of the region.
In the
water, there would be so much fish that anyone could become a fisherman without
having to learn any skills.
"Back
then people did not weigh fish in kilograms but in a unit of around 20
kilograms. Normally, in one night a family could catch at least five to seven
of that unit. Some would even feed the fish to their pigs."
In years of
heavy flooding fish moving down stream into the delta would breed along the
way, and it would be extremely rare to see a field or waterway without fish in
it.
Fishermen
would enlarge the holes in their net to only catch adult fish, leaving the
young ones untouched.
Local people row boats around
a market in Moc Hoa Town, which is now Kien Tuong Town in Long An Province,
during the flooding season in 2000. Photo by Lam Chieu.
When the
floods retreated, mud, algae and water lilies would be left in the paddy
fields. The fields mud would be silt while the algae and flowers served as
organic fertilizers, leaving the fields with all the nutrition they needed.
Besides, the
floods would wash away the pathogens and wild grass seeds, and it was not
common for farmers to use fertilizers or pesticides.
A kilometer
away from Muoi’s place, Danh Van Minh, 62, asks his son to take him by
motorbike to a house nearby. The house stands along a canal and in front is a
concrete road around three meters wide.
"This
used to be a small dirt road, and every year during this season it would be two
or three meters under water," Minh says.
"The
house used to be just a hut beside which I would anchor my boat after
fishing."
Minh’s life
has been filled with tragedy. He lost his first wife and two of his children
during two different flood seasons.
In the
middle of the 1991 season his wife had twins, but both died at birth due to
lack of medical care in that rural area.
Worse still
the floods covered every inch of land that they could not find a place to bury
the children. All he could do was put their bodies in a coffin, stick a bamboo
pole in the water and hang the coffin up that.
Only a month
after they passed away could he give them a proper burial.
Five years
after they lost the twins, Minh’s wife suddenly fell sick and died. Once again
he could not bury her immediately, and had to leave her body inside a coffin on
the family boat and leave it anchored next to the hut.
In the past
20 years the delta has witnessed several floods that left a significant impact
on its residents, especially in 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2011.
The 2000
floods were the most severe in 70 years, with the water rising to 4.78 meters.
They claimed 481 lives and caused losses of nearly VND4 trillion.
As told by
Le Thanh Tam, party chief of Long An Province in 1999-2005, 20 years ago and
further, the Plain of Reeds had heavy floods almost every year.
The region
had not yet got an embankment system, and every time it flooded there was no
way to tell where the road was and where the canal was. The only way people
could move around was by boat.
"Back
then we always had fish, shrimps and crabs in abundance, but we would lose
lives every year, and of children in most cases.
"When
the floods retreated, we had to expend a lot of effort to rebuild houses and
roads."
People in Tri Ton District of
An Giang Province fish on a flooded field during the flooding season in 2008.
Photo by Lam Chieu.
But a 2017
study by the Mekong River Commission estimated that the flooding provides $8-10
billion in annual economic benefits while causing losses of just $60-70
million.
The Mekong
River flows through six countries, China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia,
and Vietnam, before reaching the sea.
Many parts
of the Mekong Delta were formed by sedimentation over eons.
When the
Vietnamese expanded their nation to the south, they began to conquer the delta
in the 18th century. For generations, no other place in the nation could
compare with it as a agriculture and aquaculture hub.
In his book
‘Last days of the Mighty Mekong’ published in February last year, Brian Eyler,
director of the Asia Program at U.S. think tank Stimson Center, writes:
"For the past 3,000 years, the Mekong carried about 150 million tons of
sediment in its system to the delta each year."
Without the
sedimentation, the delta’s land would fall apart under natural conditions,
which are worsened by intense groundwater extraction and sea level rise, he
says.
He strongly
condemns China’s dam building in the upstream areas of the Mekong for holding
back floodwaters and, along with them, sediments.
Nguyen Huu
Thien, an independent researcher into the ecology of the Mekong Delta, says the
main cause of the low floods this year is the El Nino phenomenon that lasted
from the year’s beginning to the end of August, resulting in scanty rain fall
in the region.
According to
the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the rainy season arrived
late last year and was shorter than usual, with the result that rainfall was 8
percent below normal at 1,240 mm.
Le Anh Tuan, deputy director of Can Tho University’s Research
Institute of Climate Change, says the calamity faced by the delta cannot be blamed
just on nature or Chinese dams.
"Sea
levels rise and the Earth gets warmer. Yes. But that happens just a little each
year and it needs a long period for dramatic changes. It is humans who have
accelerated that process."
He cites one
example of human action that changed the delta’s hydrological profile. Ever
since the delta was formed, it has had several low-lying areas like the Long
Xuyen quadrilateral in Kien Giang and An Giang provinces and Can Tho City and
the Plain of Reeds that worked as natural reservoirs to store the seasonal
floodwaters, he explains.
For
generations farmers did not use them for cultivation, but due to the wars, the
nation had to consider food security, and built embankments to keep the
seasonal floodwaters from flowing into them and directed the water toward the
sea, he says.
"Now in
peace time, we still have the mindset of growing as much rice as we can, and
many have treated the seasonal floods as a disaster for their paddy fields
while in fact it is a blessing.
"With
that thinking, many have continued to keep out the floods, going against
nature, thus intensifying the lack of water once it took hold in the
region."
Minh, who
has been a poor farmer his entire life and is haunted by a tragic past related
to the floods, does not care much for the explanations experts like Tuan have
to offer.
After his
wife’s death, he took his son to another village, remarried and built a new
life.
He now owns
a 6,000 sq.m rice field and both his home and field are surrounded by embankments,
allowing him and others in his neighborhood to go against nature and cultivate
three instead of just two rice crops as in the past.
The field
does not have any time to recover, and instead of getting floodwaters that wash
it clean and deposit sediments, it has to do with plant protection chemicals
instead.
With this method of growing rice, farmers remain mired in poverty
since they have to spend money on fertilizers and pesticides for
every crop and also lose out on an abundant source of fish, shrimp and crab and
the plants that always grow in the flood season.
"My
children and grandchildren have all taken turns to leave," Minh says,
reflecting the trend of delta dwellers abandoning their hometown for Ho Chi
Minh City and other industrial areas, where they work in factories or the
service sector.
AGRICULTURE
Secretary William D. Dar said the 15-day rice buffer stock maintained by the
National Food Authority (NFA) cannot be expanded without committing additional
resources to procurement, and estimated the cost at about P1 billion for every
day of reserves sufficient to meet demand.
In a
virtual briefing on Tuesday, Mr. Dar added that the Rice Tariffication Law, or
Republic Act 11203, has ye to demonstrate its full advantages, and resisted
calls for its amendment.
“An
example is rice buffer stocking. It is being recommended to be at 30 days’
(worth of estimated demand). Having a 30-day buffer stock requires a higher
investment from the national government. This is one of the adjustments that
would take place without amending the law,” Mr. Dar said.
Mr.
Dar said increasing the buffer stock held by the NFA requires P1 billion for a
“single day” of demand. “If a 15-day buffer stock is needed, the NFA needs P15
billion, while P30 billion is needed for a 30-day rice buffer stock.”
Mr.
Dar said rice imports for the year are currently approaching 2 million metric
tons (MT) as of August, with 300,000 MT still set to arrive by the end of 2020.
Regarding
the drop in the farmgate price of palay, or unmilled rice, Mr. Dar said the
Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) told rice importers to avoid bringing in
shipments in October and November in order not to disrupt prices during the
harvest.
“We hope that the rice importers will observe the government’s
request,” Mr. Dar said.
The
Department of Agriculture (DA), citing the Philippine Rice Information System
(PRiSM), said palay prices in the last two weeks of September have averaged P18
in Central Luzon and P19 in Cagayan Valley.
The
Federation of Free Farmers (FFF) have disputed the DA’s price estimates and
instead estimated the price farmers receive for clean and dry palay at P15-P17
per kilogram, while wet or freshly-harvested palay yields about P11-P14.
The
Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) estimated that that the average farmgate
price of palay during the second week of September declined 3% week-on-week to
P17.12 per kilogram. — Revin Mikhael D.
Ochave
NO COMPLAINTS. Department of
Agricuture 7 Director Salvador Diputado says farmers in Central Visayas are
earning enough and are not suffering from losses. (SunStar file)
+
A A
-
October
6, 2020
PRICES of wet and dry palay in
Central Visayas have remained stable amid the low buying prices in some parts
of the country, a top official from the Department of Agriculture (DA) said.
“We are not affected by the imports. The prices are stable and within range,”
DA 7 Director Salvador Diputado told SunStar Cebu.
Bohol and Negros Oriental are the region’s rice baskets.
Average price of freshly harvested or wet palay is at P14 a kilo in Bohol while
dry palay is at P18.50 per kilo. In Negros Oriental, the buying price of wet
palay is sold at P15 a kilo while dry palay is at P17.50.
“Our technicians are always looking over the prices. What we don’t want is a
sharp decline or increase of the prices,” Diputado said.
The DA 7 chief explained that rice imports balance the market in the region
since its production is not sufficient vis-a-vis the consumption.
“So far, we have not heard of any complaints from our farmers here. They’re
earning enough. They have no losses, and they can still finance their
production for the next harvest season,” he said.
Cebu remains the highest rice consumer in the region with a food requirement of
337, 424 metric tons (MT) of rice in 2018.
But since the province is not a major rice producer with only 7,971 MT of rice
production, it sources most of its supply from Bohol and Negros Oriental.
Diputado said some regions suffer from low buying prices of rice because they
have overflowing production.
“We are not a surplus region. Our region was already importing rice even
before, to meet the consumption,” he said.
Farmers in other areas of the country are seeking the intervention of lawmakers
for the declining prices of palay as a result of the Rice Tariffication Law
(RTL) passed last year.
Drop in prices
According to reports, farmgate prices have reportedly dropped to between P11
per kilogram (/kg) to P13/kg for wet palay and P14/kg to P17/kg for dry palay.
The RTL lifted the restrictions on rice imports in the Philippines, opening a
free trade for the country’s staple on a global scale.
According to the DA, buying prices for dry palay in the country’s top-producing
areas reach P19 per kilo, at par with the maximum buying price set by the
National Food Authority (NFA).
The quick palay price survey report made by the Philippine Rice Information
System (Prism) from Sept. 16 to 30, 2020, showed that prices of palay averaged
P18/ kg in Central Luzon and P19/kg in Cagayan Valley.
The two regions are the country’s top rice producers, accounting for roughly 19
percent and 12.5 percent, respectively, of total national harvest in 2019, at
18.8 million metric tons (MMT).
Agriculture Secretary William Dar, in a statement, said prevailing palay prices
in the Philippines towards the end of the second semester of 2020 were actually
higher than in previous years.
Grains traders and middlemen usually buy wet or freshly-harvested palay, with
high moisture content (MC) at prices 35 percent to 40 percent lower than dried
grains at 14 percent MC, as they shoulder the costs of hauling, transportation,
and drying.
A separate survey conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority during the
last two weeks of September showed that farmgate prices of palay were at
P17.12/kg, 5.8 percent higher than P16.18/kg in 2019, for the same period.
“Our Prism data, therefore, debunks the disinformation waged by interest groups
against the RTL, blaming it for the decline in prices of palay,” said Dar.
Groups like the Federation of Free Farmers called for the review and repeal of
the RTL, saying as palay prices continue to drop and rice importation remains
unregulated by the government. (JOB with PR)
VIEW
COMMENTS
DISCLAIMER:
SunStar website welcomes friendly
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inappropriate will automatically be deleted.
Govt to tighten import regulations
to curb GMOs influx
LAHORE: The government is all set to
restrict imports of genetically modified grains in the country in lights of
recommendations to be forwarded by a recently-formed committee, it was learnt
on Tuesday.
The government constituted the body to
tighten import regulations to restrict influx of grains laced with genetically
modified organisms (GMOs) into country for food, feed and processing purposes.
The committee has been asked to finalise
and submit its report/ recommendations to the National Biosafety Centre within
four weeks.
Jawed Salim Qureshi, chairman of the
committee said there is dire need for import regulations for GMOs to safeguard
interest of domestic consumers, processors, farmers and exporters.
Qureshi dismayed over what he called
present poor arrangements for importing grains and other food stuff.
“There is literally no proper check on
placing curbs on such imports,” said Qureshi, who heads Pakistan Engineering
Council. “We need to assess impact of GM grains not only on human health, but
also on agriculture and whole economy. It is very unfortunate that our exports
got hurt in past due to presence of GMOs.”
The committee’s chairman said rice exports
have been hurt in the past due to tainted GMOs.
“We will prepare our detailed report after
assessing all aspects related to GMO grains and formulate recommendations,” he
added.
In April 2018, government issued
instructions to Department of Plant Protection for strict regulations of
inbound and exporting rice consignments. This move was initiated following
serious concerns raised by Rice Exporters Association of Pakistan about
availability of GM rice in some shipments, resulting in rejection of Pakistani
export cargoes from European Union.
Punjab government later expressed
reservations over tainted trade of GM rice.
“We do not produce GM rice nor do we
import it,” the official said in a letter then. “There is no possibility of any
involvement of local companies in the processing of GM rice. If at all it is
detected from some consignments, it could have sourced from outside country,
which needs to be checked thoroughly.”
As a result of the tight regulation,
Pakistan blocked entry of a rice seed shipment last week originating from Far
East.
The committee will plug loopholes in
import regulations by invoking rules in addition to prepare recommendations for
enhancing capacities of related departments. The committee will also work for
achieving synergy among the various departments at federal as well as
provincial levels.
Last week, Pakistan Environment Protection
Agency Director General /Secretary National Biosafety Center constituted
sub-committee to formulate policy and procedure to regulate or ban the import
of GM grains for food, feed and processing in the country.
Economist cites possible improvements in
Rice Tariffication Law
By Joann Villanueva October 6, 2020,
7:05 pm
Share
·
·
·
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File photo
MANILA – An economist said the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL) has
effectively boosted domestic rice supply and brought down prices but cited
possible adjustments on the law to further protect local farmers.
RTL was signed into law in February 2019 and took into effect the
following month. It removed the quota system on rice importation and instead
imposed a levy on imported rice.
In a reply to e-mailed questions from the Philippine News Agency,
Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) chief economist Michael Ricafort
said RTL resulted in almost PHP10 a kilo drop in local rice prices relative to
its level in September to October last year when supply issues caused rice
prices to surge.
“Inevitably, this could have also reduced the prices of palay
(rice that is still not milled) bought from farmers by palay traders,” he said.
Ricafort said the local agriculture sector is “vulnerable or even
at a disadvantage” without the importation quota because their counterparts
overseas receive subsidies from their governments to help them sell their
products at a cheaper price to the Philippines.
He, however, said RTL is important “to also ensure food
security/sufficiency as a national policy priority, especially if there are
disruptions in the importation of rice as seen at the start of Covid-19
(coronavirus disease 2019).”
He said there is a need for “greater safeguards/support for the
local agricultural sector, including rice farmers, in view of cheaper
agricultural/rice imports.”
The government has already put in place safeguard measures like
prioritizing local farmers before allowing more rice importation to prevent a
further drop in the farmgate price of rice.
Ricafort said the additional measure “include flexibility on the
volumes of rice to be imported and the variability of the import tariff rates
on rice imports”, with the latter aimed at “preventing losses for rice farmers
that could hurt the long-term viability and adversely affect national food
security especially in view of various contingencies/emergencies that could
emerge, such as the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Other possible support measures are the distribution of higher
yielding seeds or rice varieties to increase productivity and competitiveness
of local farmers, increased mechanization of processes, construction of more
irrigation facilities to increase harvests and reduce cost, and improvement of
the supply chain linkages between farmers and the buyers. (PNA)
THE Philippines will have an abundant
supply of rice by the end of 2020, Agriculture Secretary William Dar assured on
Tuesday.
Rice Stall Vendor
In a virtual briefing, Dar said about 2 million metric tons (MT)
of imported rice were in the country, with an additional 200,000 to 300,000
coming by yearend.
“And if that is the case by the end of
this year and the harvest that we have locally, plus the imports that we
[already] have, we will have a very rice-secured country, meaning our inventory
will not be worrisome by the end of the year. We have good for three months,”
he said partly in Filipino.
To prevent local palay (unmilled rice)
prices from dropping sharply due to rice imports, Dar said the DA was closely
coordinating with rice traders and importers, and encouraging them not to
coincide their importations with the country’s rice harvest season.
“We are talking with those who want to
import, since under the Rice Tariffication Law, it’s a free trade. We call that
liberalized trade. So out of patriotism…we are using to ask all traders who
import. And there are those who agree not to import during the harvest period,
because that is the time when palay prices could go down, especially with large
imports,” Dar explained partly in Filipino.
Prices of palay averaged P18 per kilo in
Central Luzon and P19/kilo in Cagayan Valley, while freshly harvested palay in
the two regions averaged P14/kilo, according to the latest report of the
Philippine Rice Information System.
Data from the Philippine Statistics
Authority showed that the last two weeks of September saw farmgate prices of
palay hit P17.12/kilo, up 5.8 percent rom P16.18/kilo in the same period in
2019.
Under the Rice Tarrification Law,
formally known as Republic Act 11203 and signed in February 2019, rice traders
are allowed to import as much rice as they want, provided they pay the
necessary tariffs.
The country applies a 35-percent tariff
for rice shipments from Southeast Asia countries, 40 percent for in-quota or
within minimum access volume (MAV) from non-Southeast Asian nations, and 180
percent for out-quota and non-Southeast Asian, or as calculated by the Tariff
Commission.
In an attempt to contain price
increase for consumers, Brazil decided to lower the Common External Tariff
(TEC) on rice imports from outside Mercosur to zero.
Brazil has negotiated the purchase of 225,000 tons of rice from
the United States, India, and Guyana, which are expected in the country during
the second half of October and November.
In an attempt
to contain the price increase for consumers, Brazil decided to lower the Common
External Tariff (TEC) on rice imports from outside Mercosur to zero.
The measure was
approved in early September, when the Executive Management Committee (GECEX) of
the Chamber of Foreign Trade (CAMEX) lowered the levy for paddy rice until
December 31, following on a proposal from the Ministry of Agriculture and Food
Supplies (MAPA). The temporary tariff reduction is restricted to a quota of
400,000 tons of grain.
Brazilian rice
production in the 2019/2020 harvest, estimated by the national food supply
company CONAB reached 11.2 million tons, and was supposed to be sufficient for
an estimated consumption of 10.8 million tons. For 2021, rice production is
expected to grow by 7.2% over the previous harvest.
According to a
report published by Valor Econômico newspaper, the Brazilian government has not
yet
A research and policy advocacy group has
called on the National Food Authority (NFA) to step up its procurement of palay
(unmilled rice) and on the Department of Agriculture (DA) to quickly disburse
money from the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund. The group, Action for
Economic Reforms (AER), urged details on the Philippine Rice Information System
and Rice Fund Impact Monitoring System on the websites of the DA and the
Philippine Rice Research Institute to show transparency in the price movements
of local palay, whose farmgate prices having been falling. “The data,
complemented by statistics from the Philippine Statistics Authority can further
guide the DA’s Rice Program implementers, as well as rice farmers’
organizations in targeting where, say postharvest facilities like solar dryers,
should be poured in and where palay procurement by the National Food Authority
and local governments can be focused,” AER President Jessica Reyes-Cantos said
in a statement. Such information, she added, would also guide community-based
organizations partnering with DA regional officials to monitor fund utilization
and the impact of different productivity and competitiveness enhancement
programs.
It should come as no surprise that California Gov. Gavin Newsom
wants to make the internal combustion engine extinct in the state by 2035. His
edict, while consistent with his assumed autonomous rule over the state's
one-party political system, apparently did not faze those elected to the
Assembly and Senate.
Ending the internal combustion engine as a viable option for
automobile owners and the trucking industry may sound laudable in certain
circles, but the practicalities of how this will work in a state that trumpets
itself as having the "world's fifth largest economy" are
non-existent. How long will California enjoy such a position in the world if
everything the current governor has done since last March flies in the face of
a representative government with its legislative, executive, and judicial
checks and balances?
The governor's announcement gained the usual media attention
related to cars. Missed from that discussion was the similar call to make
farm machinery – tractors and the like – all electric by 2045. This is
consistent with the state's goal of eliminating diesel engines in medium- and
heavy-duty trucks at the same time California declares itself carbon-free.
For rice growers alone this is troubling as the equipment and
combines used to prepare the fields in spring and harvest the crop in the fall
will likewise need to be all-electric by that deadline. How does the
all-electric rice harvester, required to go non-stop from field to field,
"refuel" each day if current generations of harvester do not see the
barn or an appropriately outfitted power outlet for months at a time?
Who will build these all-electric behemoths? Which equipment
manufacturer is going to expense the capital necessary to build machines that
will be required in just one state? Diesel-powered tractors are not being
banned elsewhere in the United States.
What about the batteries necessary to power these machines? From
where will we mine the zinc, lithium, manganese, and other minerals necessary
to manufacture these batteries? How many times can we recharge these batteries
before they lose their ability to hold a charge? Will the technology exist to
cool these batteries so they do not combust while being used nearly non-stop in
fields and orchards where the outdoor temperature can exceed 110 degrees?
How does California intend to power these charging stations when
it cannot guarantee power to its residents? Imagine the 12-hour blackout
starting just as people return home from their typical workday when they're
expected to charge their cars and iPhones. It's happening already.
It is apparent that the state's move to
renewable energy does not work. Solar generation generally works for a few
hours per day, but only in the absence of clouds and apocalyptic wildfire
smoke. There are no good battery solutions yet to capture and store this power
and release it when needed. Wind generation is fickle as well.
KARACHI:Pakistan has yet to fully recover
from the wheat and flour crisis and a similar scandal is feared to occur again
early next year as the government may miss the production and procurement
targets of the grain in the ongoing harvesting season.
“Excessive rains and the attack of yellow leaf rust
virus on the staple wheat crop in some parts of Punjab (whose share in total
production stands at 70%) may have initially caused some losses,” said a Ministry
of National Food Security and Research official while talking to The Express
Tribune.
The government’s Federal Committee on Agriculture (FCA)
had set a production target of 27.03 million tons from 9.2 hectares (22.73
million acres) in 2020.
“Overall, 2020 wheat production is expected to remain
close to the five-year average (25.38 million tons), but below previous
expectation of a bumper output,” Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the
United Nations said on its official website the other day. The average
production stands close to the total annual requirement for the grain in the
country.
Agriculture Forum of Pakistan (AFP) Chairman Ibrahim
Mughal said it seems impossible to achieve the production target of 27 million
tons of wheat this year as farmers sowed seeds over around 21 million acres
only against the target of 22.73 million acres from October 2019 to February
2020.
“The high cost of production, including higher
fertiliser prices, and a low support price (minimum purchase price of wheat set
by the government at Rs35 per kg for the current year) did not allow farmers to
sow seeds on a larger area,” he said.
FAO said in March-April, unseasonal heavy rains and
localised hail over areas of the main wheat-producing province of Punjab, delayed
harvesting operations had caused localised damage to standing crops.
Above-average rains raise concerns over the worsening of the desert locust
outbreak, which has been present in the county since the beginning of 2019.
“The abundant rains in March/April improved vegetation
conditions that, together with warm temperatures in April, could support locust
breeding, with an increase in locust numbers that may damage late-planted wheat
crops still to be harvested,” it said.
The 2020 wheat season had started on time last October
and progressed well until February. During this period, favourable weather
conditions, ample irrigation water supplies and adequate availability of
agricultural inputs, such as fertilisers, chemicals, and labour, allowed
farmers to plant an above-average area and had fostered expectations for bumper
yields this year, it said. Last year (2019), wheat production dropped around
2.5% to 24.47 million tons compared to 25.10 million tons in the prior year of
2018. The government had set a production target of 25.6 million ton for 2019.
Moreover, the procurement was 35% (2.5 million tons)
less than the target of around seven million tons by Pakistan Agricultural
Storage and Services Corporation (Passco) and four provincial food departments.
The low production, low procurement and low carryover
stocks from previous years had triggered the wheat and flour pricing crisis in
December 2019 and January 2020 when flour price soared by Rs15 per kg to around
Rs60 in retail in Karachi and other parts of the country.
Procurement
It is assumed there are little or no carryover stocks
available this year from the previous years, while Passco and provincial food
departments may not achieve the set procurement target of a cumulative seven
million tons this year as well.
“The government is procuring wheat at Rs35/kg from
farmers compared to higher price being offered by traders in the private
sector,” Mughal said.“The government of Punjab is procuring the grain through
invoking section 144 (which bans movement of the grain by the private sector)
to ensure it meets the set target,” he said.
The same wheat is being sold at Rs40/kg in wholesale and
the whole-wheat flour at Rs60/kg in Karachi and other parts of the country, he
said.
Another official at the ministry said such issues were
not there in Sindh (whose share stands at around 14%) and the province is
estimated to achieve bumper crop. “Provinces have delayed submitting initial
production reports by over one-month due to the coronavirus. They were
scheduled to file the reports on April 1.”
Govt to tighten import regulations
to curb GMOs influx
LAHORE: The government is all set to restrict
imports of genetically modified grains in the country in lights of
recommendations to be forwarded by a recently-formed committee, it was learnt
on Tuesday.
The government constituted the body to
tighten import regulations to restrict influx of grains laced with genetically
modified organisms (GMOs) into country for food, feed and processing purposes.
The committee has been asked to finalise
and submit its report/ recommendations to the National Biosafety Centre within
four weeks.
Jawed Salim Qureshi, chairman of the
committee said there is dire need for import regulations for GMOs to safeguard
interest of domestic consumers, processors, farmers and exporters.
Qureshi dismayed over what he called
present poor arrangements for importing grains and other food stuff.
“There is literally no proper check on
placing curbs on such imports,” said Qureshi, who heads Pakistan Engineering
Council. “We need to assess impact of GM grains not only on human health, but
also on agriculture and whole economy. It is very unfortunate that our exports
got hurt in past due to presence of GMOs.”
The committee’s chairman said rice exports
have been hurt in the past due to tainted GMOs.
“We will prepare our detailed report after
assessing all aspects related to GMO grains and formulate recommendations,” he
added.
In April 2018, government issued
instructions to Department of Plant Protection for strict regulations of
inbound and exporting rice consignments. This move was initiated following
serious concerns raised by Rice Exporters Association of Pakistan about
availability of GM rice in some shipments, resulting in rejection of Pakistani
export cargoes from European Union.
Punjab government later expressed
reservations over tainted trade of GM rice.
“We do not produce GM rice nor do we
import it,” the official said in a letter then. “There is no possibility of any
involvement of local companies in the processing of GM rice. If at all it is
detected from some consignments, it could have sourced from outside country,
which needs to be checked thoroughly.”
As a result of the tight regulation,
Pakistan blocked entry of a rice seed shipment last week originating from Far
East.
The committee will plug loopholes in
import regulations by invoking rules in addition to prepare recommendations for
enhancing capacities of related departments. The committee will also work for
achieving synergy among the various departments at federal as well as
provincial levels.
Last week, Pakistan Environment Protection
Agency Director General /Secretary National Biosafety Center constituted
sub-committee to formulate policy and procedure to regulate or ban the import
of GM grains for food, feed and processing in the country.
KARACHI: Unity Foods Ltd stated in a
notice to the exchange that the board of directors was considering acquisition
of 29.9 million shares of Reem Rice Mills at face value of Rs10 apiece.
It would comprise 100 per cent shares
of Reem’s share capital which was currently owned as a joint venture between
the East Al-Ghurair Group of UAE and Al Muhaidib of Saudi Arabia.
Unity said that Reem was considered one
of the premium basmati brands of Pakistan with access to local and
international markets.
Pakistan
opposes Indian claim on Basmati rice in EU
Islamabad to
file opposition against New Delhi claim of geographical indication to have
exclusivity on Basmati rice in EU
Islamuddin Sajid
|06.10.2020
ISLAMABAD
Pakistan
announced it will file an opposition against India's claim of geographical
indication (GI) tag for Basmati rice in the EU, state-run media reported on
Tuesday.
A
geographical indication is a sign used for products with a specific
geographical origin, possessing qualities or reputation essentially based on
natural and human factors of their place of origin.
The
decision was made in a meeting chaired by Abdul Razak Dawood, the prime minister's
advisor for commerce, at the capital Islamabad, according to Radio Pakistan.
The
meeting was attended by the commerce secretary, chairman of Intellectual
Property Organization, representatives of Rice Exporters Association of
Pakistan, and government's legal advisors.
"Pakistan
will vehemently oppose India’s application in the EU and restrain India from
obtaining exclusive GI tag of Basmati rice," Radio Pakistan quoted Dawood
as saying.
The
minister ensured the rice exporters to protect their claim of GI for Basmati
rice.
Exporters
informed the minister that Pakistan is a major grower and producer of Basmati
rice and that New Delhi's not right in its claim of exclusivity.
According
to media reports, New Delhi had applied for GI tag in the EU for basmati rice
on Sept. 11, claiming exclusivity on it.
India in
its application had claimed that basmati rice has an Indian origin although the
same type of rice is largely produced in Pakistan, local daily The News quoted
a Pakistani official as saying.
In 2006,
the EU under its special rules recognized basmati as a joint product of
Pakistan and India.
Pakistan
exports 500,000-700,000 tons of basmati rice to different parts of the world
out of which 200,000 to 250,000 tons are being shipped to EU countries, according
to the Pakistani Commerce Ministry data.
NO COMPLAINTS. Department of
Agricuture 7 Director Salvador Diputado says farmers in Central Visayas are
earning enough and are not suffering from losses. (SunStar file)
+
A A
-
October
6, 2020
PRICES of wet and dry palay in
Central Visayas have remained stable amid the low buying prices in some parts
of the country, a top official from the Department of Agriculture (DA) said.
“We are not affected by the imports. The prices are stable and within range,”
DA 7 Director Salvador Diputado told SunStar Cebu.
Bohol and Negros Oriental are the region’s rice baskets.
Average price of freshly harvested or wet palay is at P14 a kilo in Bohol while
dry palay is at P18.50 per kilo. In Negros Oriental, the buying price of wet
palay is sold at P15 a kilo while dry palay is at P17.50.
“Our technicians are always looking over the prices. What we don’t want is a
sharp decline or increase of the prices,” Diputado said.
The DA 7 chief explained that rice imports balance the market in the region
since its production is not sufficient vis-a-vis the consumption.
“So far, we have not heard of any complaints from our farmers here. They’re
earning enough. They have no losses, and they can still finance their
production for the next harvest season,” he said.
Cebu remains the highest rice consumer in the region with a food requirement of
337, 424 metric tons (MT) of rice in 2018.
But since the province is not a major rice producer with only 7,971 MT of rice
production, it sources most of its supply from Bohol and Negros Oriental.
Diputado said some regions suffer from low buying prices of rice because they
have overflowing production.
“We are not a surplus region. Our region was already importing rice even
before, to meet the consumption,” he said.
Farmers in other areas of the country are seeking the intervention of lawmakers
for the declining prices of palay as a result of the Rice Tariffication Law
(RTL) passed last year.
Drop in prices
According to reports, farmgate prices have reportedly dropped to between P11
per kilogram (/kg) to P13/kg for wet palay and P14/kg to P17/kg for dry palay.
The RTL lifted the restrictions on rice imports in the Philippines, opening a
free trade for the country’s staple on a global scale.
According to the DA, buying prices for dry palay in the country’s top-producing
areas reach P19 per kilo, at par with the maximum buying price set by the
National Food Authority (NFA).
The quick palay price survey report made by the Philippine Rice Information
System (Prism) from Sept. 16 to 30, 2020, showed that prices of palay averaged
P18/ kg in Central Luzon and P19/kg in Cagayan Valley.
The two regions are the country’s top rice producers, accounting for roughly 19
percent and 12.5 percent, respectively, of total national harvest in 2019, at
18.8 million metric tons (MMT).
Agriculture Secretary William Dar, in a statement, said prevailing palay prices
in the Philippines towards the end of the second semester of 2020 were actually
higher than in previous years.
Grains traders and middlemen usually buy wet or freshly-harvested palay, with
high moisture content (MC) at prices 35 percent to 40 percent lower than dried
grains at 14 percent MC, as they shoulder the costs of hauling, transportation,
and drying.
A separate survey conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority during the
last two weeks of September showed that farmgate prices of palay were at
P17.12/kg, 5.8 percent higher than P16.18/kg in 2019, for the same period.
“Our Prism data, therefore, debunks the disinformation waged by interest groups
against the RTL, blaming it for the decline in prices of palay,” said Dar.
Groups like the Federation of Free Farmers called for the review and repeal of
the RTL, saying as palay prices continue to drop and rice importation remains
unregulated by the government. (JOB with PR)
VIEW
COMMENTS
DISCLAIMER:
SunStar website welcomes friendly
debate, but comments posted on this site do not necessarily reflect the views
of the SunStar management and its affiliates. SunStar reserves the right to
delete, reproduce or modify comments posted here without notice. Posts that are
inappropriate will automatically be deleted.
Bio-decomposer
spraying to tackle stubble burning from October 11, announces Arvind Kejriwal
Scientists at the Indian
Agricultural Research Institute, PUSA, have found a low-cost, simple and
effective way to deal with the problem of stubble burning, Kejriwal said.
Share Via Email
Published: 07th
October 2020 08:53 AM | Last Updated: 07th October
2020 08:53 AM | A+A A-
This year,
the Delhi government is going to use the solution on the land where non-basmati
rice is grown. (File Photo | PTI)
By Express News Service
NEW DELHI: Chief Minister
Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday said the Delhi government will start spraying “Pusa
bio-decomposer” solution from October 11 to prevent stubble burning in
non-basmati rice fields in the national capital.
Scientists at the Indian
Agricultural Research Institute, PUSA, have found a low-cost, simple and
effective way to deal with the problem of stubble burning, he said.
“They have developed
biodecomposer capsules, which are used to prepare a liquid formulation. The
solution, when sprayed in the fields, can decompose crop residue and turn it
into manure,” Kejriwal said after inspecting his government’s centralised
bio-decomposer system set up in Kharkhari Nahar village in southwest Delhi.
The solution increases soil
fertility and reduces the use of fertilisers, he said. This year, the Delhi
government is going to use the solution on the land where non-basmati rice is
grown.
“We have estimated that only Rs
20 lakh is needed to manage stubble in 800 hectares of agricultural land in
Delhi through this solution. It includes the cost of preparation,
transportation and spraying,” he said.
Farmers have to just give their
consent and the Delhi government will spray the solution in their fields free
of cost, he said. It takes seven days to prepare the solution, which has
jaggery and chickpea flour as ingredients.
The spraying will begin on
October 11, the chief minister said. If this proves to be successful in Delhi,
it can be a good solution for the issue of stubble burning in the neighbouring
states too, he said.
SC issues
notice on plea by MP over Basmati GI tag
A bench of Justices L
Nageswara Rao, Hemant Gupta and Ajay Rastogi also extended the HC’s interim
order against restraining the MP farmers from using the term Basmati for their
produce.
APEDA had in 2008 applied for
grant of registration on GI for the rice. (File photo)
The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice
on a plea by Madhya Pradesh and the state’s Basmati farmers challenging a
Madras High Court order dismissing objections to the grant of GI (Geographical
Indication) tag on Basmati to the Agricultural and Processed Food Products
Export Development Authority (APEDA) to the exclusion of the state’s farmers.
A
bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao, Hemant Gupta and Ajay Rastogi also extended
the HC’s interim order against restraining the MP farmers from using the term
Basmati for their produce.
Appearing
for the Madhya Kshetra Basmati Growers Association Samiti, Senior Advocate A M
Singhvi said the GI registration granted to APEDA was overbroad since it covers
108 districts spread across 2,89,576 square km in seven states when in fact it
did not deserve to be more than 35 districts spanning 9,500 square km. This, he
pointed out, had resulted in dilution of the Basmati brand.
Advocate
J Sai Deepak, who appeared for the MP government, supported Singhvi’s
submissions.
APEDA
had in 2008 applied for grant of registration on GI for the rice. The
application claimed five entire states/UT namely Delhi, Punjab, Haryana,
Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh and parts of Uttar Pradesh and erstwhile state
of Jammu and Kashmir as traditional Basmati-growing areas.
The
MP government and the farmers’ body opposed this, stating that the application
was incomplete due to non-inclusion of 13 districts of the state “which have
been cultivating Basmati at least for over a century”.
Seeking a stay of the HC order, the state said that the matter involves the
livelihood of 80,000 farmers across the 13 districts.
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30th Anniversary Makes for a Busy National Rice Month
By Cameron Jacobs
ARLINGTON, VA -- September is a busy time for USA Rice as
promotional programming is launched to celebrate National Rice Month (NRM) and
the many contributions the U.S. industry makes to the nation.
"This September marked the 30th anniversary of NRM, and
our team responded accordingly, with ramped up social media, recipe contests,
and giveaways, all month-long," said Michael Klein, USA Rice vice
president for marketing, communications, and domestic promotion.
Daily social media posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
gave consumers a reason to #thinkrice every day, and featured rice recipes,
nutritional information, sustainability facts, cooking tips, meet the farmer
profiles, and much more.The robust
social schedule yielded tremendous results for the month with more than 128,000
impressions and 1,212 new followers.
The USA Rice team of nutrition influencers shared NRM
talking points and rice nutritional information with their extensive
networks.The Registered Dietitians (RD)
created six new rice recipes in honor of NRM that were distributed through
individual blog posts and highlighted the nutritional benefits of U.S.-grown
rice.
Two NRM contests challenged consumers on their rice
knowledge, both factual and practical.The first giveaway was a U.S.-grown rice trivia contest in which three
lucky winners received NRM prize packs filled with 30th anniversary branded
cooking aprons, tote bags, koozies, and rice paddles.The second giveaway was for a rice recipe
contest made with short or medium grain rice accompanied by a quote on why the
home cooks love using U.S.-grown rice.The grand prize included a 30th NRM prize pack plus an Aroma rice cooker
and samples of U.S.-grown rice.
"The winning recipes were Toasted Rice & Chicken
Soup and Refreshing Pineapple Rice," said Klein."What really made those two dishes stand
out were their quotes.One winner called
US.-grown rice 'a versatile pantry must-have that makes it easy to pull
together quick, delicious, and nutritious meals my whole family loves!'The other winner said, 'I love using
U.S.-grown rice because I know each grain is carefully harvested and packaged
with love.What makes eating U.S.-grown
rice even better is having the opportunity to support the hard-working farmers,
mill operators, truck drivers, and everyone else in between!'"
Special-themed editions of USA Rice consumer and foodservice
newsletters were distributed and filled with historical information on the 30th
anniversary, ways to celebrate, recipe inspiration, and additional rice
resources.
September also is Whole Grains Month and USA Rice joined the
Whole Grain Council in sponsoring "The Grainies," awards that
recognize consumers who "choose whole grains" by submitting whole
grain recipe entries or posting products with the whole grain stamp to social
media.The Grainies received more than
200 entries and 10 winners were chosen.
"This NRM wrap-up doesn't even touch on partnership
promotions with rice cooker manufacturer Zojirushi and a wildly successful NRM
recipe contest sponsored by FeedFeed, an online forum connecting people who
love to cook," said Klein."Look for those stories in future Daily posts."
Rice
tarrification critics neither foolish nor leftists
THIS is to reply to a
recent article by Manila Times columnist Fermin Adriano titled “RTL, short-term
impacts and the modern-day Luddites” (Aug. 6, 2020). Mr. Adriano was reacting
to a study we had earlier released titled “Rice traders liberated winner and
losers from the Rice Tarrification Law.”
Mr. Adriano’s
long-winded explanations did not dispute our basic finding that farmers’ losses
far exceeded consumers’ gains during the first year of the Rice Tarrification
Law’s (RTL) implementation from March 2019 to February 2020. This outcome
completely negated the assurances of RTL proponents that, while farmers would
suffer reduced palay prices, their losses would be more than offset by benefits
to consumers through lower rice prices.
Using our model, Mr.
Adriano made some recomputations but limited his analysis to a 10-month instead
of 12-month period from May 2019 to February 2020, claiming a two-month lag
before imports could affect prices. This is questionable since rice from
Vietnam or Thailand can reach local markets in less than a week. Also, 570.000
tons, or about 25 percent of total imports in the first year of RTL, arrived in
March and April 2019. Even if not all were released into the market, the mere
notice of their arrival would have immediately impacted on local rice and palay
(unmilled rice) prices.
In any case, the
results of Mr. Adriano’s calculations do not deviate much from our own figures.
We estimated farmer losses at P80 billion, if prices in RTL’s first year were
matched with prices in the preceding 12-month period. He came up with P71
biIIion, using only a I0-month period. Next, he estimated consumer gains from
lower rice prices at P38.7 billion, or practically equal to our own figure for
12 months.
Poor math, ignorance
of rice business
If the comparison was based on a more normal year, say, March 2017 to February
2018 (because prices were abnormally high during the rice crisis in 2018), we
estimated that farmers lost P 40 billion while consumers gained only P232
million. Mr. Adriano came out with P38 billion in farmer losses and P4 billion
in consumer gains.
Interestingly, Mr.
Adriano never details his computation of consumer gains and merely acknowledges
the large gap between farmer losses and consumer gains “for the sake of
argument.” He further argues that consumer gains, even if smaller, had a much
larger impact on inflation and consumer behavior than the figures suggest.
However, this is difficult to fathom, given that his own estimates translate to
savings per consumer of below P1 per day on the high side and P37 per year on
the low side.
Mr. Adriano’s
allegation that wholesalers lost from P48 to 39 billion stems from his faulty
math and poor understanding of the palay business. He uses simple instead of
weighted averages of prices and wrongly assumes that monthly palay production
is uniform throughout the year. He directly compares wholesale rice prices to
palaybuying rates, unaware that at least 1.5 kilograms of palay are required to
produce a kg of milled rice. Also, wholesalers do not deal with palay, they buy
rice in bulk from importers or trader-millers who procure palay from farmers,
and then pass on the rice to retailers who sell to final consumers. If
wholesalers were really losing up to P4 billion per month, they could have
immediately stopped their buy-and-sell business, and the rice industry would
have ground to a halt.
Because of his faulty
analysis, Mr. Adriano ends up pointing to retailers as the real culprit,
estimating their gain at P48 billion. Whether this is accurate or not, the
important conclusion is that market intermediaries gained the most from RTL at
the expense of farmers and definitely with minimal benefit to consumers.
Farmers treated as
victims and mere statistics
Mr. Adriano argues that market imperfections have long existed and the
discrepancy between farmgate and retail prices is not unique to rice. However,
he misses our study’s crucial finding that price distortions worsened with RTL.
The decrease in wholesale prices due to cheap imports was not passed on to
consumers in full. It was captured by wholesalers and retailers, who gobbled up
an extra P3 to P4 per kg on top of their regular margins. At the other end,
farmers bore the full brunt of a drastic decline in palay prices. Thus, despite
Mr. Adriano’s denial, RTL actually opened the window for even more
profiteering, while rendering government agencies inutile in controlling it.
Mr. Adriano then says
it is premature to judge RTL and first-year results cannot justify reviewing or
amending it. In another forum where he represented the Department of
Agriculture (DA), he advised waiting another 3 to 5 years before making any
conclusions. Clearly, Mr. Adriano does not appreciate how a farmer feels
earning almost nothing after harvest, knowing that he must still feed his
family in the coming six months before the next crop comes in. Asking millions
of farmers to wait several more years reveals his ignorance of or insensitivity
to their plight. To economists like him, the farmer is a mere statistic or pawn
in achieving inflation and other macroeconomic targets, and just collateral
damage in their procrustean quest to prove their theories right.
Previously, Mr.
Adriano called RTL critics “foolish” for offering “no better alternative than
to revert back to the old ways.’’ In his current article, he characterizes them
as ‘’modern-day Luddites,” referring to 19th century English textile workers
who rebelled against the introduction of job-displacing machines. Finally, he
resorted to red-tagging, describing opponents of the trade liberalization
ideology, including presumably objectors to the RTL, as “leftists.”
Again, Mr. Adriano
fails to understand critics’ views and has decided to ridicule them and put
words into their mouths. Indeed there are groups clamoring for the junking of
the RTL but they are doing so because they are worse off now than during the pre-RTL
period, despite all its imperfections. Other groups are pushing for amendments
in the law and refinements in the adjustment programs.
Uniting modern-day
Luddites?
All these groups, however, agree that rice farmers need to become more
efficient and competitive. But because we did not prepare them before RTL, we
now need to calibrate and manage the entry of rice so that we ensure enough
supply for consumers, but simultaneously prevent a flood of imports that will
kill our farmers before they have a chance to survive. This position is neither
foolish nor leftist. And let us remember that the Luddites were not mere
technophobes; they were artisans and craftsmen, much like our own farmers,
simply trying to survive amidst the introduction of new technologies and
policies threatening their livelihood and existence.
For some reason, Mr.
Adriano thinks that I am offended or insulted by his critique of our study. In
truth, Mr. Adriano does not deserve that much attention from me. I know where
he is coming from and the agenda he says he has carried for the last 30 years.
He is being paid to do his job in the same way that I have to live up to the
expectation of our farmer-members.
What worries me,
however; is why the DA is giving Mr. Adriano full authority to speak for the
department. Mr. Adriano says that he is a volunteer ‘’one peso’’ consultant who
does not receive any emolument from the DA. How, then, can he represent the DA
in any official way?
Further, he is
currently a paid functionary or adviser of the World Bank and the Asian
Development Bank (ADB), a status that he appears to have kept under wraps. Both
banks are patently pro-liberalization institutions, offering loans or grants to
our government on the strict condition that we pursue trade opening and market
deregulation policies, including the passage and continuance of RTL.
With the way Mr.
Adriano has been acting as a DA spokesperson, it may not be long before those
he calls modern-day Luddites will start venting their frustrations not only on
the DA but on the Duterte administration itself.
A research and policy advocacy think tank
has urged the government to address the low farmgate prices of palay by
increasing the budget intended for the procurement of the staple and by
fast-tracking the release of funds under the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement
Fund (RCEF).
In a statement released on Monday, the Action
for Economic Reform (AER) said the Department of Agriculture (DA) in particular
could be guided by its new data systems to track the needs of palay farmers and
use RCEF to assist them.
It added that ramping up palay buying
operations could immediately address the decline in prices, especially in
provinces where quotations have gone down to as low as P12 a kilo.
“The data [from DA’s Philippine Rice
Information System (PRiSM) and the Rice Fund Impact Monitoring System] can
further guide the DA’s rice program implementers as well as farmers’
organizations in targeting where [machinery] should be poured in and where
palay procurement by the National Food Authority (NFA) and local governments
can be focused,” it said.
“Different areas have different conditions
and interventions definitely have to be area-specific. The information will
also be most useful in guiding DA’s [community-based organizations] to monitor
fund utilization and the impact of different productivity and competitiveness
enhancement programs,” it added.
AER said that in doing so, the industry
might see a decline in the production cost of palay, which currently average at
P12 a kilo, or double the cost of producing the staple in countries where the
Philippines import rice such as Vietnam and Thailand.
The AER’s call was made as the row between
the DA and the Federation of Free Farmers (FFF) continued to intensify, with
the former asserting that palay prices were stable in contrast to FFF’s claim
that palay prices were now lower than production costs.
To alleviate the plight of farmers, the NFA
has been aggressive in buying palay. For September alone, it said that it was
able to procure two million bags of palay and was ready to buy more stocks. INQ
This article or excerpt is included in the GLP’s daily curated
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Editor’s note: The author of this story has
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Paddy variety PR-14 has brought some cheer for farmers as it is
fetching good price in mandis of the district.
It is being procured at Rs 1,900-2,000 per quintal, while the
MSP is Rs 1,888. Farmers are happy that the variety may cover their losses to
some extent. “I had brought PR-14 variety of 4 acres in the Karnal mandi and it
was sold at Rs 2,000 per quintal on Monday, while earlier my PR-26 variety was
procured at Rs 1,460 last week, below the MSP. PR-14 variety will help me
recover losses,” said Gurdeep Chawla, a farmer of Nagla village. He said he got
an average yield of 30 quintal this time.
Manjeet Singh of Newal village was also elated as his PR-14
variety was procured at Rs 1,985. “I have brought paddy of seven acres and had
hoped for a good price.”
Asked about the reason for the good price, an arhtiya said the
size of the grain was thin and strong and it could be mixed with other
export-quality paddy. However, one of the rice millers denied the theory of
mixing it with the export quality and said it had the quality of less breakage
grain during processing, due to which it was procured on price above the MSP. —
TNS
The prestigious Rockefeller-funded Food System Vision Prize has recognized the
“vision” for the Philippines being able to get rid of P742-billion worth of
food imports by 2050, an extensive collaborative work by a team of government
and private employees and members of the civic organizations.
Food from aquatic environment and
hybrid facilities.
A statement showed that
the Philippines, led by the National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST),
has seized a “special recognition” from the Food System Vision Prize out of
1,300 entries globally.
The country’s entry is an
extensive collaborative work between 14 institutions including those from the
academe, government, private sector, and civic groups.
In its entry “Feeding
Metro Manila in 2050,” the home team foresees that Filipinos will have adapted
to a more diversified diet by 2050.
This weans them from a
calorie-rich rice-based diet that is linked with several chronic diseases. They
will be more accustomed then to eating the richer staples they were used to in
the old tradition—banana, sweet potato, and other root crops and tubers.
Online food ordering PHD app
Food will then be sourced
from more affluent farmers who directly deliver to consumers more nutritious
food via digital-based distribution system.
“Food imports mainly
commodities (rice, corn, onion, mungbean, garlic) can be reduced. A total of
P742 billion used for food imports in 2018 and growing 25 percent a year will
circulate in the local economy. There will be fewer problems with water and
food scarcity, traffic, crime, and pollution,” the experts predicted.
The future food system,
according to them, will transform waste into economically valuable resources
such as fertilizers or renewable energy.
“The traditional sewage
treatment plant will be transformed to a ‘factory’ where domestic waste will be
processed to produce recycled water, energy and fertilizers. Consumers will
earn from the daily waste they generate,” said Eufemio Rasco of NAST.
Food will be produced
with less water, while land will be regenerated into watersheds, forests, and
habitat for a richer biodiversity. That’s what the future would look like for
the Philippines.
The visioning competition
was put up by New York-headquartered Rockefeller Foundation and OpenIDEO and
SecondMuse.
Its goal is to help
economies develop a vision for a sustainable and nourishing diet for their
people. It has established a $2 million fund for the winnings.
Rockefeller Foundation is
also a major funder of Consortium of International Agricultural Research
Centers (CGIA). International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), which is located
in the Philippines, is one of its centers.
SUPPRESS® herbicide EC, a product manufactured by Westbridge
Agricultural Products, was registered in California in 2015. Its active
ingredients are Caprylic Acid and Capric Acid. It is registered for use in
organic production, and it is labeled for use in “agricultural food and
non-food crops”. In rice, it can be utilized only when the field is drained (no
standing water allowed).
Since 2019, UCCE Rice Advisor Whitney
Brim-DeForest has been testing SUPPRESS® herbicide for use in weed control in
rice. In 2019, she collaborated with Jim Cook (Colusa County Farm Supply), to
spot spray weedy rice in a field containing Type 3 (long awns, straw hulled).
The application was made with a handheld backpack sprayer, at the highest
labeled rate. The timing was too close to heading, however, and some of the
weedy rice plants recovered.
This past season, in 2020, we did further
testing in the field, on several different weedy rice types (field was a mix of
Types 1, 2, 3, and 5). The application timing for the field testing in 2020 was
made with a handheld backpack sprayer, at the highest labeled rate. The timing
was approximately at panicle initiation, and at two weeks after application,
the weedy rice plants were 100% controlled. At harvest, there was some
regrowth, but none of the plants produced viable panicles.
For use in weedy rice spot spraying in 2021,
SUPPRESS® could be an option, but the label does not allow for application when
there is standing water in the field. Therefore, in order to be used, the field
will need to be drained before application. Application timing is after the
last grass herbicide has been applied, but before the weedy rice has started to
flower (generally no earlier than 60 days after seeding). Reflooding is
recommended within 48 hours of application to reduce the germination of
additional weeds, unless the field can remain drained until harvest.
Remember to always follow all label
instructions when applying any pesticide, as the label is the law. Make sure to
pay particular attention to the Use Precautions and Restrictions. Consult your
local Agricultural Commissioner's Office regarding buffer zones and aerial
restrictions, before making any applications.
For more information, contact UCCE Rice
Advisor, Whitney Brim-DeForest (wbrimdeforest@ucanr.edu), and
Roberta Firoved, Industry Affairs Manager for the California Rice Commission (rfiroved@calrice.org)
University of California Cooperative
Extension Sutter-Yuba-Colusa is holding a series
of webinars in September and October to provide research updates on
some of the major crops in the Sacramento Valley. The classes are relevant to
growers throughout California and are primarily focused on pest management and
pesticide safety.
The September 9th webinar will
feature Franz Niederholzer, Orchard Systems Advisor. "We will be
reviewing proven almond IPM practices with an eye to
reducing input costs, where possible, while delivering effective pest
control," says Niederholzer. He has been working in almonds in
the Sacramento Valley for almost 20 years.
Amber Vinchesi-Vahl, Vegetable
Crops Advisor, will give her webinar on September 16th. She
states, "I will be providing information on important pest issues in
vegetables and the latest research updates on disease and weed management in processing
tomatoes and cucumber beetles in melons." Her research on tomatoes
covers cultivator trials for within-row weed control and monitoring of
soilborne fungal pathogens.
Whitney Brim-DeForest, Rice and Wild
Rice Advisor, will present September 30th. "The webinar will
provide an opportunity for discussion and interaction about weed
identification," she says. "We will also cover the latest research
updates on specific weed species, resistance management, and new herbicides in rice." The
information is relevant to both organic and conventional rice growers, so all
are encouraged to attend.
The final webinar will take place on
October 7, and will be given by Sarah Light, Agronomy Advisor. Light
says, "We will cover opportunities to decrease environmental risk through
pesticide selection and application, accurate diagnosis, and reduction of loss
to the environment."
Enrollment is limited, so register early. The
cost is $20 for 1, $35 for 2, $50 for 3, and $60 for 4 webinars. For more
details or to register, visit http://ucanr.edu/syc-uccevirtualwebinars. DPR CE
credits have been approved (4 "other" hours total, 1 per class),
and CCA credits have been approved for IPM credits (4 hours
total, 1 per class).
If you have questions, contact Whitney
Brim-DeForest [wbrimdeforest@ucanr.edu or
call the UCCE Sutter-Yuba office at (530) 822-7515].
I recently visited a couple of fields that
were showing signs of sulfide toxicity. At first sight, the symptoms could
be confused with blast. Plants dry out and turn brown, panicles blank out.
However, plants affected by sulfide won't have any leaf or neck blast
lesions. But the tell sign that sulfide toxicity is the issue are the
roots. Affected plants will have black roots that smell like rotten eggs.
Sulfide toxicity
occurs in patches, most likely, where organic matter accumulated and water flow
is limited.
Roots
of plants affected by sulfide turn black and smell like rotten eggs.
Sulfide toxicity happens when soil microbes
use sulfate as energy source, and produce hidrogen sulfide as a by
product. Normally, the sulfide will precipitate and won't accumulate, but
in certain soils sulfide can accumulate and become toxic to the plant.
Sulfide toxicity seems to be caused by accumulation of organic matter,
such as straw or root balls, that do not decompose completely during the winter
time. Irrigation water with high salt content can aggravate the problem,
especially in areas where water movement is limited.
Aerating the soil stops the accumulation of
sulfide, therefore, draining for harvest will stop the problem.
It's that time again! If you would like to
submit seeds for herbicide resistance testing, many weed species will be
maturing right about now.
The UCCE Rice Weeds Program tests grower
submitted seed samples of potentially herbicide-resistant watergrass
species, sprangletop, smallflower umbrella sedge and bulrush. However,
we encourage you to submit ANY species that you suspect to be resistant. We
keep individual grower information confidential and any reporting of results
will not identify individual growers.
Please fill out the form (linked
here) for each weed seed sample (each field and/or species). The
following tips will ensure that you receive the best possible results:
The
best timing of collection is when the seed easily falls off the seed head
by gentle agitation in a paper bag (see video for demonstration):
o For watergrass species, this
should be close to rice harvest (seeds should be brownish in color)
o For sprangletop, timing will be
earlier, in August or September (seeds will appear greenish)
o For the sedges, timing may be as
early as July, all the way through early September
o Smallflower umbrella sedge seed
is yellow, with brown hulls (looks like dust)
o Bulrush (roughseed) seeds are
black and have small hairs
Seed
should be collected from areas that you know have been sprayed with the
suspected herbicide.
Collect
seeds from multiple plants, and the amount should be at least a few
handfuls of seed, to ensure sufficient quantity for testing.
Please
do not collect seed from around field margins.
Allow
seed to dry in the paper bag to prevent molding.
Bring the sample and form to your local UCCE
Farm Advisor (Whitney, Luis, or Michelle) or
send or drop off samples at the Rice Experiment Station (RES) in Biggs. If you
need assistance in collection, please contact your Farm Advisor or PCA. Results
should be emailed to you in March of 2021.
BUTUAN CITY, Oct. 6
(PIA) -- Amid the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the provincial
government of Agusan del Sur continues to provide assistance and other
interventions to address the need of the different sectors particularly the
agriculture.
According to Agusan del
Sur Governor Santiago Cane, Jr., so far as to the food production is concerned,
the provincial government has implemented the distribution of seedlings, along
with the donations from PhilRice, and some 30,000 chickens to the different
municipalities. “This program is ongoing. As soon as supply will come, we will
immediately dispose or disperse them to the different people identified as the
poorest of the poor,” he said.
“We also distributed
packs of seeds for those deserving people. We’re also able to distribute banana
plantlets for the farmers and even tilapia fingerlings. Agriculture farm
machineries worth P72-million were also distributed to the different farm
irrigators associations, as well as farmers associations in the province of
Agusan del Sur,” cited Cane.
Cane also revealed that
farmers are disheartened by the price of palay which has gone down while the
price of milled rice has remained high. “So, we thought that it’s about time
that the Department of Agriculture through the National Food Authority will have
to do something so that farmers could survive despite that we have produce more
than enough for the provincial needs. As a matter of fact, during the last
planting season, we have an excess of production of about 5,000 bags of milled
rice which caused our rice millers to worry on the overproduction,” he
recalled.
This situation,
according to the governor, is also applicable and existing in other parts of
the country.
Knowing this concern,
Governor Cane called on the different concerned agencies to continue to work
closely with the local government units and give due attention to the needs of
the affected sectors particularly in agriculture.
“The provincial
government will never stop providing the necessary and appropriate programs to
the different sectors that could help uplift their lives especially during this
crisis,” said Cane. (JPG/PIA-Agusan del Sur)
PHILIPPINES SEEKS TWO-MONTH HALT ON
RICE IMPORTS TO SUPPORT PRICES
10/6/2020
MANILA,
Oct 6 (Reuters) - The Philippines' Department of Agriculture on Tuesday asked
local importers to stop importing rice between October and November to support
domestic prices during the country's main wet-season harvest.
The
world's biggest rice importer, which buys mainly from neighbouring Vietnam, is
now expected to purchase around 2.3 million tonnes of its staple food this
year, Agriculture Secretary William Dar told reporters.
The
Philippines' rice purchases last year were estimated at a record-high 2.9
million tonnes after it lifted a two-decade-old restriction on the size of
imports.
The
government expects year-end rice stockpiles to be the biggest in 10 years.
Dar
said almost 2 million tonnes of rice imports had arrived this year and about
300,000 tonnes more may be shipped in before year end.
The
domestic rice harvest in the second half will be "substantial", he
said, with the main harvest expected between June and November.
To
support prices amid rising domestic stockpiles and the influx of imports, the
government is also now "massively" buying unmilled rice from local
farmers for buffer stocking, Dar said.
The
Philippines' rice inventory is closely monitored by rice producers and traders
in Vietnam and other top exporters such as Thailand and India.
Asia's
rice export prices eased last week in most hubs on lacklustre demand, with
fresh supplies expected to be a further drag. Activity in the export market was
muted with the absence of buyers from the Philippines, according to traders.
(Reporting
by Enrico Dela Cruz Editing by Ed Davies)
Pakistan has decided to file a case against India’s claim of Geographical
Indication (GI) tag for Basmati rice in the European Union.
In a meeting chaired by Adviser to Prime Minister on Commerce Abdul Razak
Dawood, representatives of the Rice Exporters Association of Pakistan (REAP)
were of the view that Pakistan was a major grower and producer of Basmati rice
and India’s claim of exclusivity was unjustified.
Dawood assured rice exporters that Pakistan would vehemently oppose
India’s application in the European Union and restrain Delhi from obtaining the
exclusive GI tag for Basmati rice.
He supported REAP and relevant stakeholders, assuring them that their
claim on GI tag for Basmati rice would be protected and their concerns would be
addressed.
India had submitted an application in the European Union, claiming sole
ownership of Basmati rice and falsely misrepresenting its exclusivity. The
meeting was attended by the commerce secretary, Intellectual Property
Organisation (IPO-Pakistan) chairman and the legal fraternity.
India claimed in the
application that long grain basmati rice is grown and produced in districts of
the states of Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh and a few districts of
Uttar Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. However, the neighbouring country did not
mention that the same rice is also grown in parts of Pakistan.
Published
in The Express Tribune, October 6th,
2020.
Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar today directed the market
committee secretary to get the calibration of moisture meters done every Sunday
to ensure transparency in checking of moisture in grains.
Rs 1,300 cr eastern bypass
for Karnal
·CM ML Khattar on Sunday
announced that the eastern bypass of the city would be constructed to give a
major relief to the commuters of Karnal and nearby areas
·The NHAI has given the
final nod for Rs1,300-crore project
·The length of the bypass
will be 35 km and it will connect Kutel with Jhanjhari village
“Market committee, agencies and arhtiyas should keep their
meters with them during paddy auctioning,” he said during a visit to the Karnal
grain market, where he took stock of paddy procurement.
He listened to the issues of farmers, rice millers and arhtiyas.
Farmers raised the issue that the “Meri Fasal Mera Byora” portal was not
working properly and they were not getting messages regarding the timing for
bringing their produce to mandis.
“Farmers of UP are being stopped by the administration. They
should be allowed,” a farmer told the CM, who claimed that the technical flaws
of the portal had been resolved now.
He assured that the UP farmers would’ve to get themselves registered
on the portal from October 5 and they could bring their produce as per the
schedule given to them. A farmer of Gharaunda alleged that even though the crop
was procured at MSP, farmers were given less payment. The CM asked the farmers
to give a written complaint in this regard and urged them not to accept less
payment.
Khattar got conducted the auctioning of paddy of two farmers and
urgedo the farming community to bring their produce after drying it. “The
government will procure each and every grain on MSP but the farmers should
bring their produce after drying it. They should ensure the moisture in their
grains should be up to 17 per cent,” he added. —TNS
Renowned cooking expert Sanjeev Kapoor, who is always
vocal for local food, says coarse grains like kodo,
ragi, jowar are more beneficial for health than polished grains so
the menu at five-star hotels also includes millets.
IANS New DelhiPublished on: October 05, 2020 6:27 IST
Image Source : PIXABAY
Coarse grains, millets
must for balanced diet
Kodo is more
beneficial for health than polished rice sold in the market. Kodo is a type of
coarse grain and coarse cereals are rich in micronutrients as well as fibre so
it is necessary to include coarse grains in your food intake for boosting
fitness.
Renowned cooking
expert Sanjeev Kapoor, who is always vocal for local food, says coarse grains
like kodo, ragi, jowar are more beneficial for health than polished grains so
the menu at five-star hotels also includes millets.
Kapoor, who is also
the Onboard Chef at Tata Sampann, told IANS that local food is not only
beneficial for health but is also delicious so the menu of five-star hotels
includes area-specific local foods which are in demand. He said,"We
launched a khichdi with Tata Sampann in which we included a lot of millets and
spices along with lentil rice and there is a lot of demand for it."
Kapoor, who considers
homemade food important, said it would be a better prospect if pizzas, burgers
and other continental foods were prepared at home.
People's increasing
interest in foods containing coarse grains is undoubtedly beneficial for health
as scientists have found they contain lot of rich micronutrients.
However, scientists
from the National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) under the Indian Council of
Medical Research (ICMR) say that a limited amount of coarse grains should be
included in the diet.
Dr Subba Rao M.
Gavaravarapu, scientist at NIN, Hyderabad and Chief of Nutrition Information
and Communication division, said at present, the market offers only coarse
grains except all other grains which is not good because maintaining diversity
in food is important.
"NIN says that a
person must have food which provides 2,000 calories a day, which includes
nearly 270 grams of grains in it. It is good to take 40 to 50 per cent or 120
to 130 gram coarse grains. The rest of the grains we have been eating since
childhood must be included in the diet," Dr Subba Rao added.
Micronutrients and
fibre, he said, are found in coarse grains so it is beneficial to include them
in food for daily intake but eating only coarse grains is not recommended.
September was
celebrated as the 'Nutrition Month'. A special programme "Local Diet With
Proper Nutrition" highlighted the importance of local food. Food experts
described the consumption of seasonal crops grown in different parts of the
country as more beneficial. In this event organised by NIN and Tata Sampann,
Director of the National Institute of Nutrition Dr R. Hemlata said there is
need to talk openly about the local food items.
KHONSA, Oct 3: The Tirap KVK on
Saturday organized a ‘training-cum-awareness programme on pest management of
sali rice’ in Sipini village.
KVK Head Dr DS Chhonkar advised the farmers to be hard working
and be role models for other farmers and unemployed youths.
Plant protection scientist Pura Hano spoke on the basic
management system of rice pest.
“Any chemical pesticide should be used when it is needed by
strictly considering the economic threshold level of the pest population,” he
said.
The KVK scientists also interacted with the 33 farmer
participants regarding the pest infestation problem and its management.
Two knapsack sprayers and insecticides for rice leaf folder and
caseworm were divided among the farmers, according to the severity of
infestation in their fields.
ARLINGTON, VA --
Recent surveys tracking the way Americans shop for groceries have shown
ground-breaking results. A year ago, more than 80 percent of
shoppers said they had never shopped for groceries online, and online
shopping was stagnant at around 3 percent of all grocery sales, or about
$1.2 billion. But by June of 2020, online grocery sales in the
United States hit $7.2 billion, thanks in no small part to the COVID-19
pandemic that has touched so many aspects of our lives.
"How we grocery shop has changed dramatically in just a few
months," said Cameron Jacobs, USA Rice director of domestic
promotion. "And the changes look to be permanent as
post-pandemic, e-grocery sales are expected to climb from nearly $35
billion to more than $250 billion, and rice, which has gained already,
could solidify its position in people's pantries."
In August, grocery customer spending rose 6 percent from $310 to $330 per
month on average, while shopping trips fell almost 11 percent versus a
year ago. The fact that a majority of shoppers still prefer to
visit a brick-and-mortar grocery store, either to shop in-store or pick
up curbside orders, indicates that most shoppers remain loyal to
retailers and online brands with a physical store presence.
"People may be shopping less but they're spending more on groceries
when they do shop," said Jacobs. "There's been a
comparable uptick in eating in versus dining out, and we're seeing
increased interest from consumers for new recipes using pantry staples,
like rice, as they cook at home more."
According to Supermarket News, a trade publication for the
retail food-brand industry, rice has been one of the top ten sales
gainers since the pandemic began last spring. For the nine-week
period ending June 1, 2020, rice sales were up 84.5 percent.
"It's important for customers to know that the U.S. rice industry
can continue to meet the increased demand and renewed interest in our
products with safe, affordable, sustainably-grown rice and exciting,
delicious, and nutritious recipes that will fit any budget and any
taste," Jacobs concluded.
2020 is a weird year. We
promise to continue making songs, skits, and vlogs to keep you smiling. Please
subscribe – all you gotta do is click here: http://bit.ly/2UroXoU
$2.2 trillion COVID relief bill includes $120 billion for restaurants
Chains excluded
from restaurant grant program proposed as part of HEROES Act; grants are geared
for independent restaurants, food trucks and bars in underrepresented
communities with a focus on women- and minority-operated establishments.
House Democrats
introduced late Monday an updated version of the HEROES Act, which would infuse
$2.2 trillion into the economy in the form of increased unemployment benefits
and the establishment of $120 billion in grants for restaurants, bars and food
trucks.
The Independent Restaurant
Coalition asked Congress on Monday night to support the latest version of the
HEROES Act. Besides providing direct relief for independent restaurants, the
bill also includes another round of Paycheck Protection Program loans
geared for the hardest hit small businesses.
“The revised version of the
HEROES Act is the best plan Congress has put forward to protect the livelihoods
of the 11 million people employed by independent restaurants across the
country,” the coalition said in a statement released late Monday. “Independent
restaurants are out of options, and by providing flexible grants based on
revenue losses to independent restaurants who need them, Congress can
ensure many businesses have a shot at surviving colder weather and getting
through the pandemic.”
The grant program was first
introduced in the summer as a bipartisan $120 billion relief
package called the “Real Economic Support That Acknowledges Unique Restaurant
Assistance Needed to Survive Act,” or RESTAURANTS Act. It is aimed
at providing relief for the nation’s 500,000 independent restaurants and the
more than 11 million restaurant workers impacted by the pandemic.
This is the first time a version
of the HEROES Act has included the coalition's relief proposal.
Grants would be given to restaurants,
food trucks, taverns and bars based on “the difference between the business’s
2019 revenues and estimated 2020 revenues for each quarter,” according to the
bill.
The federal grants will
prioritize awarding funds to "marginalized and underrepresented communities"
with a focus on women- and minority-operated establishments with annual
revenues of less than $1.5 million. The funds would be earmarked for
payroll and other eligible expenses and would need to be used by June 30, 2021.
A chain or franchise with more than 20 locations doing business
under the same name is not eligible.
Industry advocates have been urging
Congress for months to provide direct relief to the industry, which has
experienced 100,000 closures during the crisis. The coalition says 1 in 4
Americans who lost their jobs during this COVID-19 pandemic
worked in the industry.
The National Restaurant Association
has asked Congress to endorse the RESTAURANTS Act, saying it “takes a balanced
approach to support independent and locally owned franchise restaurants.”
While this version of the
RESTAURANTS Act is a "tremendous" step in the right
direction, the bill falls short when it comes to helping the entire
industry because it denies federal support for small regional chain
restaurants and individual owners of small franchise restaurants,
said NRA Executive Vice President of Public Affairs Sean Kennedy.
"After six months of a
pandemic that has brought our industry to its knees, policymakers cannot pick
restaurant winners and losers for federal relief," Kennedy said in a
statement released Tuesday. “Restaurants from revered independents, to
beloved regional chains, to the smallest corner diner are shutting down daily
across the country. Each of these restaurants deserves our support."
The International Franchise
Association also objected to the House version of the bill because it doesn't
support franchise owners, even ones with a few units. For example, the owner of
10 Taco Bells is ineligible because Taco Bell has 6,000 units,
well over the under 20-unit threshold. That same franchise owner, however, is
eligible for a second round of PPP funding.
In a recent NRA survey, 40% of
operators said that it is unlikely that their restaurant will still be in
business six months from now if there are no additional relief packages from
the federal government.
·$75 billion to support COVID-19
testing, tracing and treatment
·$1,200 in direct stimulus per
taxpayer
·Restoration of the $600 in weekly
federal unemployment payments through January
“This $2.2 trillion Heroes Act
provides the absolutely needed resources to protect lives, livelihoods and the
life of our democracy over the coming months,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
said in a statement. “Democrats are making good on our promise to
compromise with this updated bill, which is necessary to address the immediate
health and economic crisis facing America's working families right now.”
Egypt increases efforts to reduce pollution from burning rice straw
The black cloud caused by the burning of rice straw – a by-product of
rice farming – at the end of the harvest season first appeared over the Nile
Delta and Cairo in 1997
Over 500,000 tons of rice straw have been collected
this year as part of the country's efforts to reduce pollution caused by straw
burning, Environment Minister Yasmine Fouad told Prime Minister Mostafa
Madbouly in a meeting on Saturday.
The black cloud caused by the
burning of rice straw – a by-product of rice farming – at the end of the
harvest season first appeared over the Nile Delta and Cairo in 1997, but did
not become visible to the naked eye until two years later.
The amount of rice straw
collected by the government this year accounts for 88 percent of the straw
produced this harvest season, Minister Fouad said, adding that last year, the
government collected 350,000 tons of rice straw.
Fouad noted that as many as 289
sites have been opened for collecting rice straw in Nile Delta governorates.
Up to 75 centres affiliated with
the environment ministry have been set up to follow up on the burning of
agricultural and solid waste, she said.
Rice is one of the most common
crops cultivated by farmers in Egypt, and it is a staple food for the vast
majority of the country's population.
Egypt's rice production stood at
4.3 million tonnes in 2020/2021, the same as in 2019/2020, and the country's
consumption of rice increased to 4.5 million tonnes in 2020/2021, up from 4.4
million tonnes in 2019/2020, according to a report released by the US' Foreign
Agriculture Service (FAS) in September.
Farmer
groups that have reported low palay prices are only exaggerating data and
sowing disinformation to push for the amendment or repeal of the rice
tariffication law (RTL), according to the Department of Agriculture (DA).
In a
strongly worded statement released on Saturday, the agency debunked reports
that the farmgate price of palay dipped to P12 a kilo earlier this week, which
groups and organizations blamed on the controversial rice policy.
The
Federation of Free Farmers, in particular, said the abundance of local supply
and imported rice saturated the market, which took a heavy toll on farmers who
still could not compete with cheaper imported rice.
“The
interest groups, along with former DA officials, have exaggerated data on palay
to push for the amendment or repeal of the RTL. They are resurrecting old
arguments against RTL,” Agriculture Secretary William Dar said.
He pointed
out that the agency was now using an online system to track and consolidate
data and the numbers showed that palay prices in top-producing areas were at
P19 a kilo, while the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported that as of
the second week of September, the average farmgate price of palay nationwide
was at P17.12 a kilo.
The
technology, called the Philippine Rice Information System (PRiSM), conducted a
quick palay price survey report between Sept. 16 and 30.
It showed
that the average price of palay in Central Luzon and Cagayan Valley were at P18
and P19 a kilo, respectively.
The two
regions account for more than 30 percent of the country’s palay harvest, which
reached 18.8 million metric tons last year.
DA said
the PRiSM was used to conduct a survey in 16 regions with 219 respondents,
among them farmers, traders and millers.
It also
considered price monitoring reports from DA regional field offices and
provincial and municipal local government units.
“We base
our analysis and decisions using more reliable data,” Dar said. “We go down to
the communities to monitor and ensure that our interventions are in place and
benefit our farmers.”
In a press
briefing, the official also said that the rice tariffication law should not be
amended yet, adding that the policy would take time before all stakeholders
benefit.
While data
provided by the PRiSM and PSA may be accurate, the PSA also showed that there
were provinces with palay rates pegged at P12 a kilo. These included North
Cotabato, Abra, Benguet, Davao City and Davao del Norte.
For now,
the DA continues to lobby for the assistance of local governments and other
government agencies. Those who would not be catered by government procurement,
Dar said, were entitled to cash and food assistance under the Bayanihan Law.
INQ
A
rice wholesaler blamed high prices in the capital due to supply scarcity Rajib
Dhar/Dhaka Tribune
Green chilli prices heat up volatile kitchen market
Prices of rice and other essential ingredients remained
high across the capital over the week, but onion prices slightly reduced due to
government initiatives.
Green chilli prices also increased from last week by
Tk10-20 per kg, selling from Tk190-220 per kg over the week, compared to
Tk170-210 per kg from the week before.
Retailers said that they sold a kilogram of BR-28 rice at
Tk52-55, miniket at Tk56-65 per kg, coarse variety of Najirshail at Tk45-50 a
kg and fine variety at Tk60-65.
These varieties sold at Tk40-60 per kg a week ago.
Md Ripon, a rice wholesaler at Malibagh kitchen market,
blamed the high prices of supply scarcity.
“We, the middle-income people, are struggling to make ends
meet and cover our household expenses as incomes have reduced due to the
Covid-19 pandemic. If the government takes stern actions then these
traders would never dare destabilize the market,” said Shammi Akter, a
teacher from Banasree.
The Ministry of Food, after a meeting with traders and
stakeholders, on September 29, fixed the prices of rice for the millers for the
first time ever, aiming to keep the most essential item market stable.
Food Minister Sadhan Chandra Majumder said that prices of
rice had increased a lot in a week which was totally unexpected.
"It is a bad sign," he added.
"In the market, we found that a group of unscrupulous
traders had kept a lot of paddy and rice stored in about 50 closed mills,"
he said. No one had informed the authorities about the issue earlier,
though many of the millers knew that.
Visiting several kitchen markets in the capital including
Malibagh, Mogbazar, Rampura and Karwanbazar on Saturday, this correspondent
found that onion prices had slightly reduced by Tk5-10 per kilogram from last
week.
Local onions sold for Tk80-90 a kg and imported onions for
Tk65-80 a kg, compared to Tk85-100 a kg and Tk75-85 per kg respectively from
last week.
They were selling at wholesale markets at Tk75-80 per kg
for local ones and Tk60-70 per kg for imported ones.
In the middle of September this year onion prices shot up
by Tk30-50 per kg after the export ban was announced in India on September 14.
Local onions immediately sold for as high as Tk120 per kg, even though it
retailed below Tk35 per kg even in August. Last year the price also increased
as high as Tk 300 per kg after the ban of onion export in India.
However, in an attempt to curb the onion price hike, the
government took several initiatives, such as selling the item in open market
sale (OMS) across the country at Tk30 per kg, selling them online through
selective e-commerce platforms at Tk36 per kg, withdrawing the 5% import duty
on the bulb, intensifying market monitoring to prevent its price manipulation
and import onions from other countries such as Egypt and Turkey.
Meanwhile, ginger and garlic prices remained high, as
imported ginger was retailing for Tk220-250 a kg and local ginger at Tk160-190
a kg.
Local garlic was retailing at Tk100-120 a kg and imported
garlic at Tk90-100 a kg.
In the wholesale markets, the four items were selling
for less by Tk5-10 per kg.
Unpacked soybean oil was retailing at Tk90-95 per litre,
bottled soybean oil at Tk108-110 per litre and palm oil at Tk85-86 a litre.
Among vegetables, aubergines were selling for Tk70-80 a
kg, tomatoes for Tk120-140 a kg, papayas for Tk40-45 a kg, beans for Tk80-85 a
kg, and cucumbers for Tk40-45 a kg.
Green chillies were sold for Tk190-220 a kg in retail
markets.
Retail prices of rice and edible
oil have continued to increase in Dhaka, rising by up to Tk 5 per kg and litre
in a week, as government has failed to rein in the market.
Customers believe a lack of
strong government monitoring is to blame for the rising prices of commodities.
Prices of bottled soybean oil
of some brands have gone up to Tk 115 per litre, increasing twice in a month.
Maidul
Islam Mahin, a grocer at Rampura Kitchen Market, said he was selling oil at
previous rates on Friday because his old stock was not exhausted.
He will charge the customers
the new rates once the dealers of the companies bring the new products
Saturday.
Khurshed Alam, a retailer at
Mohakhali, said he received the new products and began selling them at the new
rates.
“People in the government work
hard when the media writes about the price hike. But we don’t see strong
monitoring by the government,” said customer Sarwar Hossain, who resides in
Malibagh.
Biswajit
Saha, the general manager of City Group which produces oil under the brand name
Teer, said they raised the prices following hike in the international market.
All the companies took approval
of the Bangladesh Tariff Commission before raising the prices, he claimed.
In the rice market, coarse
Swarna, the cheapest in Dhaka, was being sold at Tk 50 per kg.
The fine quality Miniket rice
was priced between Tk 62 and Tk 65 a kg.
Ali Ahsan, the proprietor of
Bikrampur Rice Store at Rampura, said prices of coarse varieties of rice have
increased more than the fine ones.
He was
selling Miniket at Tk 2,800 to Tk 3,000 per sack of 50 kg. The price of coarse
rice was Tk 2,450 to Tk 2,550.
“The millers have told us that
that paddy price hike has driven rice prices,” Ahsan said.
“But sitting here we can’t say
what has exactly happened,” he added.
Wahiduzzaman, a wholesaler at
Mirpur-1, said the millers were manipulating the market having bought paddy
from the farmers at lower rates much earlier.
But it’s too early to
rejoice, warn exporters; imports continue to dip
After
six months of continuous fall, India’s goods exports posted a 5.27 per cent
growth in September 2020 (year-on-year) to $27.4 billion, with crucial sectors
such as readymade garments, engineering goods, petroleum products,
pharmaceuticals and carpets on an upswing.
Some
exporters, however, feel it may be too early to celebrate, as the global
economic outlook continues to be grim, while others say that the increase in
buyer enquiries must translate into business with adequate support from the
government.
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An area
of concern is that exports from major labour-intensive sectors such as gems
& jewellery, marine products and leather & leather products continued
to decline.
India’s
imports in September 2020 declined 19.6 per cent to $30.31 billion, shrinking
the trade deficit to $2.91 billion compared to $11.67 billion in September
2019, as per preliminary data released by the Commerce & Industry Ministry
on Friday.
“While
the reversal in trend for merchandise exports turning into positive territory
in September 2020 is a matter of relief, the challenges in the external trade
would continue given the present state of global health emergency and its
economic impact on the major economies,” said Mahesh Desai, Chairman, EEPC
India.
Exporters
body FIEO pointed out that there was an increase in enquiries from buyers in different
countries, which was a positive indicator, but said the government needed to
support the sector with incentives.
“The
urgent need is to address some of the key issues including the release of the
MEIS benefits, resolving risky exporters issues, early introduction of RoDTEP
across all sectors, capping of ₹2-crore MEIS, introduction of NIRVIK scheme and expediting
introduction of the e-wallet scheme, which will further help in reviving the
exports during these difficult and torrid times,” FIEO said in a statement.
Other
sectors which posted an increase in exports in September 2020 compared with
September 2019 include iron ore, rice, other cereals, ceramic products and
glassware, oilseeds, meat, dairy & poultry, handloom, tobacco and spices,
as per the data.
“Make
in India, Make for the World: Indian merchandise exports grew 5.27 per cent in
September 2020 as compared to last year. Another indicator of the rapid
recovery of Indian economy as it surpasses pre-Covid levels across parameters,”
Commerce & Industry Minister Piyush Goyal had tweeted late on Thursday,
disclosing the export figures.
Gold, silver imports down
Major
commodities which posted a decline in imports in September 2020 over September
2019 are gold, silver, transport equipment, newsprint, leather and leather
products and sulphur & unroasted iron parts.
Exports
during April-September 2020-21 were at $125.06 billion, posting a fall of 21.43
per cent over the same period last year. Imports during April-September 2020-21
were at $148.69 billioncompared to $248.08 billion during the same period last
year, a fall of 40.06 per cent.
Exports
from India have been falling (year-on-year) since March 2020 when the
government announced a national lockdown to check the spread of Covid in the
country.
In March
2020, India’s goods exports fell 34.57 per cent compared to the same month last
year, while in April, the fall was much steeper at 60.28 per cent.
In
subsequent months, the severity of the decline in exports reduced as the world
tried to get back to work; August 2020 witnessed a lower decline of 12.66 per
cent to $22.7 billion.
Rice export prices further
increased 2 percent as exporters continued to fulfill large contracted
shipments. The Thai government participated in the Philippines’ tender on June
8.
Thailand’s rice export this year is expected to drop from
7.5 million tonnes worth Bt130 billion last year to 5 million tonnes worth
Bt115 billion, honorary president of the Thai Rice Exporters Association Chookiat
Ophaswongse said.
He attributed the drop to the strengthening baht and low rice production.
The price of Thai white rice is currently around US$490 per tonne,
compared to Vietnamese white rice at $460 per tonne, Indian at $370 per tonne
and Myanmar at $420 per tonne.
White rice accounts for 50 per cent of Thailand’s total rice exports.
He said Malaysia has only purchased 40,000 tonnes of Thai white rice this
year, compared to its usual 400,000 tonnes per year, adding that it has
switched to rice from Vietnam, India and Myanmar instead.
Meanwhile, the Philippines has imported 1.8 million tonnes of rice this
year, 1.7 million tonnes of which came from Vietnam and only around 60,000
tonnes came from Thailand. Previously, Thailand used to export around 500,000
tonnes of rice to the Philippines.
Separately, Thailand has exported 4 million tonnes of rice in the first
nine months of this year, averaging at between 300,000 and 400,000 tonnes
monthly. If it wants to achieve the goal of exporting 6.5 million tonnes
this year, then it will have to sell at least 500,000 tonnes monthly,
which he said is difficult to achieve.
Thou
Vireak | Publication
date 04 October 2020 | 22:41 ICT
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Cambodia exported a total of 488,785 tonnes of
rice, an increase of 22.62 per cent year-on-year. Post staff
Cambodia rice exports
in the first nine months of the year topped $300 million, an increase of more
than 10 per cent, according to a report by the Cambodia Rice Federation (CRF).
The data shows that
from January to September, Cambodia brought in more than $328 million from rice
exports, up from $297 million in the same period last year.
Cambodia exported a
total of 488,785 tonnes of rice, an increase of 22.62 per cent year-on-year,
which was 398,586 tonnes, said the data.
China remains the
largest export market and buys 35 per cent or 171,896 tonnes of rice.
The European Union
(including the UK) is second with 33 a per cent market share (161,614 tonnes),
of which France has the largest market share at 13 per cent.
ASEAN member markets
accounted for 67,433 tonnes of exports, while other markets accounted for
87,832 tonnes, up 69 per cent from the same period last year. Of that, Africa’s
Gabon increased imports by 81 per cent and Australia by 62 per cent.
Cambodia exported more
than 78 per cent of its fragrant rice to international markets during this
period.
Cambodia Rice
Federation (CRF) secretary-general Lun Yeng told The Post on Sunday that
Cambodia’s rice exports to the Chinese market had maintained good growth with
demand for fragrant and glutinous rice.
He said Cambodia had
exported nearly 140,000 tonnes of glutinous rice to the Chinese market in the
period, a record high.
“We see that there is
a good market for glutinous rice in China, which is being used in the
confectionery industry, and we will encourage our farmers to grow more
glutinous paddy rice next year,” he said.
Cambodian Agricultural
Research and Development Institute (CARDI) Director Dr Ouk Makara said he met
with Cambodian Rice Federation President Song Saran recently to highlight the
growing demand for glutinous rice in the Chinese market and promised to
encourage farmers to grow local glutinous paddy rice.
He said CARDI-released
Damnoeb Sbai Mongkul glutinous seedlings have not been widely cultivated since
2013 and only some farmers in Battambang and other provinces are cultivating
them.
Makara said: “I told
him to encourage farmers to grow Damnoeb Sbai Mongkul glutinous rice because it
is top quality and could meet the market demand”.
China is expected to
import a total of 5.32 million tonnes of all types of rice by 2020. China has
allowed 12 countries to sell rice, including Cambodia.
Chan Pich, general
manager of Signature of Asia, Cambodia’s leading rice exporter, told The Post
that Cambodia’s continued increase in rice exports reflects government and
private sector efforts to diversify the market.
“I think our continued
increase in rice exports is a positive sign towards the government and the rice
federation’s target of one million tonnes by 2023,” he said.
He said Signature of
Asia needs between $2 million and $3 million in working capital to buy about
25,000 tonnes of paddy rice for storage during the rice harvest season by the
end of 2020.
Cambodia’s rice
exports amounted to 620,106 tonnes in 2019, down 0.97 per cent from 626,225
tonnes in 2018. Revenue from rice exports was $501 million, down 4.3 per cent
from 2018’s $ 524 million, according to a report by the Ministry of Agriculture,
Forestry and Fisheries.
The Cambodia Rice Federation said on Saturday that Cambodia has exported a
total of 488,785 tons of milled rice in the starting nine months of 2020,
rising 23 percent compared to the same period a year ago.
Cambodia made over USD328 million in gross revenue from the commodity's export
in the cited period of this year, according to a statement.
The statement said that "within nine months of export this year, China is
the lead market, absorbing 35 percent of overall market destinations, which the
amount is 171,896 tons, and the European Union is the second lead, absorbing 33
percent, generating in the amount of 161,614 tons".
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) market has also saw 67,433
tons of the total export amount, according to the statement, also saying that
the kingdom's milled rice was transported to 69 countries and regions in the
world.
Thailand sees opportunities to boost rice exports to EU
Thailand’s premium rice products are having better
chances for export to the EU after the bloc allowed zero-tariff rice imports of
24,883 tonnes for October.
According to Keerati Rushchano, director-general of
Thailand’s Foreign Trade Department, the European Commission has recently announced
that the remaining annual quota for rice (white rice, Thai hom mali rice, Thai
fragrant rice and 100 percent parboiled rice) would have zero tariffs this
month for up to 24,883 tonnes.
The EU has set annual rice import quota for 2020 at 630,000 tonnes.
The zero import tariff is a good opportunity for Thai rice exporters to raise
their exports to the market, said Keerati. The EU normally collects an import
tariff of 145 EUR per tonne.
The bloc has required importers to apply for import licences within the first
10 working days of October.
In the first eight months of 2020, Thailand exported 146,362 tonnes of rice
worth 140 million USD to the EU.
Charoen Laothammatas, president of the Thai Rice Exporters Association, said
local rice exports to the EU are likely to drop from 2019 because of the
COVID-19 impact, which weakened rice demand at restaurants and hotels./.
PHILIPPINES SEEKS TWO-MONTH HALT ON
RICE IMPORTS TO SUPPORT PRICES
10/6/2020
MANILA,
Oct 6 (Reuters) - The Philippines' Department of Agriculture on Tuesday asked
local importers to stop importing rice between October and November to support
domestic prices during the country's main wet-season harvest.
The
world's biggest rice importer, which buys mainly from neighbouring Vietnam, is
now expected to purchase around 2.3 million tonnes of its staple food this
year, Agriculture Secretary William Dar told reporters.
The
Philippines' rice purchases last year were estimated at a record-high 2.9
million tonnes after it lifted a two-decade-old restriction on the size of
imports.
The
government expects year-end rice stockpiles to be the biggest in 10 years.
Dar
said almost 2 million tonnes of rice imports had arrived this year and about
300,000 tonnes more may be shipped in before year end.
The
domestic rice harvest in the second half will be "substantial", he
said, with the main harvest expected between June and November.
To
support prices amid rising domestic stockpiles and the influx of imports, the
government is also now "massively" buying unmilled rice from local
farmers for buffer stocking, Dar said.
The
Philippines' rice inventory is closely monitored by rice producers and traders
in Vietnam and other top exporters such as Thailand and India.
Asia's
rice export prices eased last week in most hubs on lacklustre demand, with
fresh supplies expected to be a further drag. Activity in the export market was
muted with the absence of buyers from the Philippines, according to traders.
(Reporting
by Enrico Dela Cruz Editing by Ed Davies)
Chairman,
Pakistan Agriculture Research Council, Dr. Muhammad Azeem Khan along with Dr.
Muhammad Ghulam Ali, Member PSD paid a visit to National Sugarcane and Tropical
Horticulture Research Institute in Thatta.
Dr. Azeem Khan while addressing the participants of rice travelling seminar
said that the government is taking effective measures for standardization and
enhancement of rice productivity.
In this respect PARC and its travelling seminars on rice are engaging the
agricultural scientists and experts to inform farming communities about the
importance of rice crop, and ways in which farmers can boost their rice
productivity with the aim to get maximum output of rice crop, ultimately
leading to successful rice export.
The Chairman also added that Rice is a crop of utmost importance in the
national country which has the potential to meet the food needs of the people
as well as earn foreign exchange.
Dr. Ataullah Khan, Director General PARC-SARC Karachi spoke on rice borne
diseases, pest management, improved pesticide practices in rice crop, rice
harvesting and rice exports as well as rice travel seminar.
Ttranslator expands metabolite
prediction of chemical reactions in the human body
Date:
October 5, 2020
Source:
Rice University
Summary:
A computational tool may help pharmaceutical companies expand
their ability to investigate the safety of drugs.
Share:
FULL STORY
When you
take a medication, you want to know precisely what it does. Pharmaceutical
companies go through extensive testing to ensure that you do.
With a new deep learning-based
technique created at Rice University's Brown School of Engineering, they may
soon get a better handle on how drugs in development will perform in the human
body.
The Rice lab of computer
scientist Lydia Kavraki has introduced Metabolite Translator, a computational
tool that predicts metabolites, the products of interactions between small
molecules like drugs and enzymes.
The Rice researchers take
advantage of deep-learning methods and the availability of massive reaction
datasets to give developers a broad picture of what a drug will do. The method
is unconstrained by rules that companies use to determine metabolic reactions,
opening a path to novel discoveries.
"When you're trying to
determine if a compound is a potential drug, you have to check for
toxicity," Kavraki said. "You want to confirm that it does what it
should, but you also want to know what else might happen."
The research by Kavraki, lead
author and graduate student Eleni Litsa and Rice alumna Payel Das of IBM's
Thomas J. Watson Research Center, is detailed in the Royal Society of Chemistry
journal Chemical Science.
The researchers trained
Metabolite Translator to predict metabolites through any enzyme, but measured
its success against the existing rules-based methods that are focused on the
enzymes in the liver. These enzymes are responsible for detoxifying and
eliminating xenobiotics, like drugs, pesticides and pollutants. However,
metabolites can be formed through other enzymes as well.
"Our bodies are networks of
chemical reactions," Litsa said. "They have enzymes that act upon
chemicals and may break or form bonds that change their structures into
something that could be toxic, or cause other complications. Existing
methodologies focus on the liver because most xenobiotic compounds are
metabolized there. With our work, we're trying to capture human metabolism in
general.
"The safety of a drug does
not depend only on the drug itself but also on the metabolites that can be
formed when the drug is processed in the body," Litsa said.
The rise of machine learning
architectures that operate on structured data, such as chemical molecules, make
the work possible, she said. Transformer was introduced in 2017 as a sequence
translation method that has found wide use in language translation.
Metabolite Translator is based on
SMILES (for "simplified molecular-input line-entry system"), a
notation method that uses plain text rather than diagrams to represent chemical
molecules.
"What we're doing is exactly
the same as translating a language, like English to German," Litsa said.
Due to the lack of experimental
data, the lab used transfer learning to develop Metabolite Translator. They
first pre-trained a Transformer model on 900,000 known chemical reactions and
then fine-tuned it with data on human metabolic transformations.
The researchers compared
Metabolite Translator results with those from several other predictive
techniques by analyzing known SMILES sequences of 65 drugs and 179 metabolizing
enzymes. Though Metabolite Translator was trained on a general dataset not
specific to drugs, it performed as well as commonly used rule-based methods
that have been specifically developed for drugs. But it also identified enzymes
that are not commonly involved in drug metabolism and were not found by
existing methods.
"We have a system that can
predict equally well with rule-based systems, and we didn't put any rules in
our system that require manual work and expert knowledge," Kavraki said.
"Using a machine learning-based method, we are training a system to
understand human metabolism without the need for explicitly encoding this
knowledge in the form of rules. This work would not have been possible two
years ago."
Kavraki is the Noah Harding
Professor of Computer Science, a professor of bioengineering, mechanical
engineering and electrical and computer engineering and director of Rice's Ken
Kennedy Institute. Rice University and the Cancer Prevention and Research
Institute of Texas supported the research.
1.Eleni E. Litsa, Payel Das, Lydia E. Kavraki. Prediction
of drug metabolites using neural machine translation. Chemical
Science, 2020; DOI: 10.1039/D0SC02639E
Rice University. "Deep learning gives drug design
a boost: Ttranslator expands metabolite prediction of chemical reactions in the
human body." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 5 October 2020.
<www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201005112122.htm>.
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QUEZON CITY, Oct. 4 --
Buying prices for dry palay (paddy rice) in the country’s top-producing areas
reach P19 per kilo, at par with the maximum buying price set by the National
Food Authority (NFA).
The quick palay price survey report made by the Philippine Rice Information
System (PRiSM), from September 16-30, 2020, showed that prices of palay
averaged P18 per kilo (/kg) in Central Luzon and P19/kg in Cagayan Valley.
The two regions are the country’s top rice producers, accounting for roughly 19
percent (%) and 12.5%, respectively, of total national harvest in 2019, at 18.8
million metric tons (MMT).
In the same report, PRiSM said the price for freshly-harvested palay in the two
regions averaged at P14/kg.
In a virtual press conference on October 1, Agriculture Secretary William Dar
said prevailing palay prices in the Philippines towards the end of the second
semester 2020 were actually higher than in previous years.
Grains traders and middlemen usually buy wet or freshly-harvested palay, with
high moisture content or MC, at 35% to 40% lower than dried grains at 14% MC,
as they shoulder the costs of hauling, transportation, and drying.
The NFA, an attached corporation of the Department of Agriculture, buys dry
palay with 14% MC at P19/kg nationwide. It also buys wet palay on a pro-rata
basis, and offers free transport at designated barangays, said DA-NFA
Administrator Judy Carol Dansal.
The PRiSM project is an online system that consolidates and presents accurate,
timely, and location-specific information on the status of rice crops, that
includes: rice area estimates, planting dates, yield estimates, and crop health
assessments.
Thus, it provides the DA management vital information to support its strategic
and policy decision-making on the country’s rice industry and food value chain.
PRiSM is jointly undertaken by the DA’s Philippine Rice Research Institute
(PhilRice), International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), and Sarmap, a Swiss
technology firm.
“Hence, we base our analysis and decisions using more reliable data. Bumababa
tayo sa mga communities to monitor and ensure that our interventions are in
place and benefit our farmers,” the DA chief said.
A separate survey conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) during
the last two weeks of September showed that farmgate prices of palay were at
P17.12/kg, 5.8% higher than P16.18/kg in 2019, for the same period.
“Our PRiSM data, therefore, debunks the disinformation waged by interest groups
against the rice tariffication law (RTL), blaming it for the decline in prices
of palay,” said secretary Dar.
“The interest groups, along with former DA officials, have exaggerated data on
palay to push for the amendment or repeal of the RTL. They are resurrecting old
arguments against RTL,” he added.
Interest groups, led by the Federation of Free Farmers (FFF), call for the
review and repeal of the RTL as palay prices continue to drop and rice
importation remains unregulated by the government.
The PRiSM survey was conducted in 16 regions, among 219 respondents, composed
of farmers, traders, and millers. It also considered palay price monitoring
reports from DA-regional field offices and provincial and municipal local
government units.
“Makikita dito na hindi nagkakalayo ang data na ginagamit ng gobyerno, and
definitely the reality is, hindi kasing baba ang presyo ng palay as interest
groups claim on social media,” Secretary Dar said. (DA)
The difficulties of Pakistan,
which are in debt till the throat, are constantly increasing. The people, fed
up with the Imran government due to corruption and misrule, are now starving.
Inflation is at a peak these days in the neighboring country. Food and drink
have become more expensive. Alam is that the price of wheat has reached the
record level. People have to spend 60 rupees for a kilo of wheat in Pakistan.
According to The News, the price of 40 kg wheat sack in Pakistan is 2400
rupees. For the first time, the price of wheat in the country has reached this
level.
In December last year, the
price of wheat had increased at a similar pace, when it was priced at Rs 50 per
kg. On 5 October this year, the price of wheat reached Rs 2400 per 40 kg. The
All Pakistan Floor Association has demanded central and state governments to
immediately determine the purchase price of wheat. The Floor Association says that
the shortage of wheat in the country is not due to the mill owners but to the
influential people.
Also read: Pakistan will now
fight for ‘Basmati rice’ from India, know what is the new war
The media reported that the
government of Pakistan has approved the import of 200,000 metric tonnes of
wheat from Russia, which may reach this month. Meanwhile, the National Price
Monitoring Committee (NPMC) on Monday churned out the reasons for the rise in
prices of essential commodities. It has been said that this meeting has been
held on the instructions of PM Imran Khan.
Potatoes, tomatoes and onions
are also expensive
It is not only that wheat has become expensive in Pakistan at this time, but
also the prices of essential commodities like tomatoes, potatoes, interest,
sugar are also increasing rapidly. The price of vegetables has also increased.
The Consumer Price Index in September 2020 has been 9%. It was also informed
during the meeting that the profit margins in the wholesale and retail prices
of potato, tomato and onion have increased a lot, due to which the common man
is upset.
Emraan Khan will be taken away?
In Pakistan, inflation is so uncontrollable that it is not new, but this time
it is different. In Pakistan, the rise in inflation like this is making Imran
Khan nervous because the opposition has already opened a front against the army
and Imran Khan government by forming a grand alliance. From this month,
countrywide agitations have to be done to change the system. It is believed
that the restless public can take to the streets with the opposition.
Pakistan to
oppose India's claim on exclusivity over basmati rice in EU
Adviser to Prime Minister on Commerce Abdul Razak Dawood. — APP/Files
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is set to give a befitting reply to
India’s claim on a Geographical Indication (GI) tag for basmati rice in the
European Union (EU) market.
The decision was taken on Monday during a meeting with
Adviser to Prime Minister on Commerce Abdul Razak Dawood in the chair.
The
Secretary Commerce; Chairman, Intellectual Property Organization
(IPO-Pakistan); representatives of Rice Exporters Association of Pakistan
(REAP); and the legal fraternity attended the meeting, according to a press
release.
During the
meeting, REAP representatives were of the view that Pakistan is a major grower
and producer of basmati rice and India’s claim for exclusivity is therefore
unjustified.
Dawood
categorically stated that Pakistan will vehemently oppose India’s application
in the EU and restrain New Delhi from obtaining an exclusive GI tag for basmati
rice.
The adviser
supported the concerns of REAP and relevant stakeholders and ensured that their
claim over basmati rice will be protected.
It is
pertinent to mention that India has submitted an application in the EU claiming
sole ownership of basmati rice, falsely misrepresenting its exclusivity.
According
to Gulf News,
basmati is currently recognised as a product of both Pakistan and India under
the European Regulation 2006.
Meanwhile,
Pakistan, after a delay of nearly 18 years, only recently enacted the
Geographical Indications (Registration and Protection) Act in March 2020, Pakistan
Today reported.
According
to the EU’s official journal, any country can oppose the application for
registration of a name pursuant to Article 50(2) (a) of Regulation (EU) No
1151/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council on quality schemes for
agricultural products and foodstuffs within three months from the date of
publication.
