Mini review

Rice in the global economy: strategic research and

policy issues for food security
Sushil Pandey

A
s part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of IRRI’s founding, a book titled Rice in the
global economy: strategic research and policy issues for food security was launched on 11
November 2010 during the International Rice Congress in Hanoi, Vietnam. This volume,
consisting of 18-commissioned chapters prepared by 59 authors/coauthors, provides a new vision for
the future of rice farming. The book is forward-looking and addresses key strategic questions in the
context of major developments in the global economy. The various scholarly contributions in this
book examine the key strategic questions and lay out a rich menu of options for sustainably improv-
ing rice systems and enhancing the overall performance of the global rice economy to reduce pov-
erty and hunger. The preparation of the book was managed by an editorial board chaired by Sushil
Pandey, senior economist at IRRI. The following extract captures some of the major highlights of the
book.
Worldwide, rice is the most important food staple for the poor. It is grown on more than 155
million hectares and accounts for one-fifth of the global calorie supply. Although traditionally an
Asian crop, rice has long been a staple in parts of Africa and Latin America, and its importance is
growing in those regions.
The past decade has seen many changes that will shape the way rice will be produced in the
future. These include rapid economic growth, especially in parts of Asia, rising wage rates, increas-
ing diversification of diets, global climate change, and a greater integration of the food economy
with other sectors of the global economy, including both energy and financial markets. In the context
of these major global trends, there is a need to develop a new vision for future rice farming to strate-
gically position investments in rice research, technology delivery, and the design of policy reforms.
Food security remains tenuous as evidenced by the 2008 food crisis and rising concerns regarding
its possible repeat.

IRRN Vol. 36 1
The five major elements of a vision for 2. Successfully managing structural change.
the global rice economy The Asian rice economies are poised for
The chapters in this book lay out a future vi-
sion for rice scientists and policymakers as they
confront the future. This vision is determined by
success in five major areas:
1. Meeting global food security needs by
providing an affordable and stable supply of
rice. Rice remains the most important staple
in the developing world. As such, it is critical
to global food security. On the surface, it
would appear that the biggest challenge
is to meet increasing rice consumption to
around 2020 to 2025. However, even if
rice consumption decreases beyond 2025,
the challenge will be to increase yield to
compensate for declining rice area, as
land is diverted to other crops to meet
changing diets and nonfarm uses, and for
the increasingly negative impact of climate
change. Equally important for global and
national food security is to manage price
volatility in the face of increasingly frequent
and severe shocks from water scarcity,
energy prices, and climate change.
major structural change. This involves
immense challenges to balance consumer
and producer interests and manage growing
rural-urban income disparities. The design
of rice-pricing policies will be at the heart
of this change in order to continue to make
gains in reducing rural poverty in South
Asia and Africa, where most of the poor are
concentrated. Rice price policies will also
influence the pace of diversification of rice-
farming systems and household income to
nonrice farming and nonfarm employment.
Finally, an unprecedented challenge in
managing structural change is to facilitate
land consolidation and mechanization to
accommodate the exit of millions of people
from agriculture that is bound to occur with
economic growth.
3. Enhancing efficiency in input use and value
chains. Another measure of success is to do
more with less in all aspects of rice farming
and along the value chain more generally to
both reduce costs and minimize damage to
the environment. This entails major gains in

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 the efficiency of use of water and fertilizer
and reductions in pesticides by substituting
better management and information adapted
to the plot level and adjusted to seasonal
conditions and crop growth. Higher
efficiency must extend along the value chain,
through better postharvest management and,
especially in Africa, better functioning of
input and output markets.
4. Reducing environmental footprints. The
higher plot-level input efficiencies will
be an important step toward reducing the
environmental footprint of rice farming,
particularly water consumption and the
flow of reactive chemical compounds. But,
beyond the plot level, the challenge will be
to better manage rice-based ecosystems to
reduce water pollution, soil erosion, and
downstream silting, while saving land and
biodiversity. Globally, rice systems can
contribute strongly to the mitigation of
global warming through reduced emissions
of greenhouse gases, especially methane and
nitrous oxide, as well as the sequestration of
atmospheric carbon in soil organic matter.
5. Helping lagging regions (including Africa).
A final indicator of success is improved
productivity and livelihoods in the lagging
regions, especially rainfed rice areas and
uplands where some of the poorest people
are concentrated—but without neglecting
the need for continued investment in
productivity growth in irrigated areas. With
pressure on irrigated areas to diversify
to high-value products, rainfed lowland
areas may gain a comparative advantage
in rice production in parts of Asia. These
regions face many challenges, including a
lack of infrastructure, poor institutions and
governance, and fragile soils. Many are also
vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
The rapidly growing demand for rice in
Africa and the low productivity of existing
rainfed and upland systems also pose a
huge challenge for rapidly accelerating rice
productivity there.
IRRN Vol. 36
What needs to be done?
The chapters of this book lay out a rich menu of
options for sustainably improving rice systems
and enhancing the overall performance of the
global rice economy to reduce poverty and hun-
ger. Priorities will clearly differ greatly among
countries and even within countries. They will
also necessarily embrace a wide range of tech-
nological, policy, and institutional options. Yet,
several broad priorities emerge from this book.
Global problems need global solutions, but they
must be flexible enough to meet local needs.
Research for development
Increasing yield potential and yield stability,
closing yield and efficiency gaps, reducing post-
harvest losses, and adding more value to crop-
ping or farming systems constitute clear opportu-
nities to enhance rice production, increase farm-
ers’ income, and help improve the environment.
Increased investments are needed to realize some
“quick wins,” but also to address the “best-bet”
technologies needed 10 or 20 years from now.
1. Increasing yield potential. Scientific ad-
vances in genomics and marker-assisted
breeding mean that genebank materials can
be explored on a large scale to identify and
embed the genes responsible for ever more
complicated target traits. Transgenic tech-
nologies offer the potential to engineer new
plants that were previously unthinkable, such
as rice using a new photosynthetic pathway.
Three possible strategies are
a. Increasing the yield potential of inbreds
by at least 10%.
b. Further improvement of yield heterosis
in tropical hybrids to achieve consistent
yield advantages over the best inbred
varieties of at least 20%.
c. Radical reengineering of photosynthesis
to turn the rice plant into a C4 plant and
thus increase yield potential by 30–50%.
2. Increasing yield stability and adapting to
climate change. Several approaches of germ-
plasm development and improved crop and
resource management can be deployed for
reducing the vulnerability to climate-induced
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 stresses, ranging from new germplasm with
increased stress tolerance to shifts in crop
management practices or greater diversifica-
tion of cropping systems.
3. Closing yield and input efficiency gaps. Gaps
between yields currently obtained by farmers
and what could be achieved with improved
management and varieties are still substan-
tial, certainly in Africa, but also in Asia and
Latin America. An agronomic revolution that
focuses on deploying improved management
technologies in intensive irrigated systems is
critically important for this.
4. Reducing negative environmental effects.
Many of the best management practices now
available also have large potential impact
on reducing the environmental footprint of
rice cultivation. Wider adoption of available
promising technologies and those in the pipe-
line will require strong policy support.
5. Adding value. Current processing practices in
the developing world cause around 15–25%
physical loss and, because of poor quality,
financial loss at the market of 10–20%. Many
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new technologies exist to reduce such post-
harvest losses but they will require signifi-
cantly increased investments for achieving
wider impact.
Policies and institutions
Trade and markets. For a variety of reasons,
governments intervene in rice markets and trade
more than for any other agricultural commodity.
The richer Asia of today is in a much better posi-
tion to deepen trade and liberalize rice markets.
In most cases, lower protection would benefit the
poor, who are net purchasers of rice. A reduction
in subsidies to water and agrochemicals would
also provide incentives needed to use water and
inputs more efficiently and to adopt agroecologi-
cal approaches to rice farming.
A gradual and sequential approach to
market liberalization is needed that encourages
private trade, the use of trade to reduce price
volatility to consumers when there is a domes-
tic shock, and the deployment of “light-touch”
interventions to reduce the domestic effects of
extreme price events in global markets. Scaled-
up safety net programs that are countercyclical to
price shocks and well targeted to the most vul-
nerable are needed to provide more tolerance for
domestic price movements.
Institutional change. The role of
institutional change as a core element of
sustainable rice systems and effective
markets is critical. Given water scarcity, new
institutional designs are needed to better
manage and coordinate irrigation. This involves
institutions to better coordinate cross-sectoral
water allocation, collective action to manage
irrigation systems, and better defined water
rights, although the exact institutional mix will
need to fit local circumstances. Likewise, farm
consolidation to facilitate exit from rice farming
requires well-functioning land markets, both for
rental and for sale. Restrictions on land sales
in a number of countries are likely to be major
barriers to shedding labor from rice farming as
the nonfarm sector expands.
Production systems that reduce input
use require institutional changes on several
fronts. Public extension is increasingly being
complemented or even supplanted by a range of
providers of advisory services, radio and drama
programs, and technical and market informa-
tion delivered through village kiosks and mobile
devices. Tapping the large potential of geneti-
cally modified organisms (GMOs) requires a
strong but decisive regulatory capacity to ensure
that farmers have timely access to the best tech-
nologies. Institutional strengthening is needed
to preserve the free use and exchange of genetic
resources across countries while providing in-
centives to the private sector through intellectual
property rights appropriate to the stage of seed
market development.
Finally, markets for high-value crops
and livestock are developing rapidly throughout
Asia, but small farmers often face obstacles in
linking to demanding markets in terms of quality
and safety. Investing in education, skills, rural
infrastructure, and communications is critically
important to the development of a dynamic non-
farm sector.
IRRN Vol. 36
Investing in R&D for the future
Some countries, especially China, India, and
Brazil, have recognized the critical importance
of investing in science and technology for the
future and are rapidly scaling up their invest-
ments. Yet, rice science globally is characterized
by pervasive underinvestment. Indeed, there
is a growing divide between the few countries
that are scaling up R&D investments and the
rest. The need for sustained long-run investment
is nowhere more evident than in sub-Saharan
Africa, which has to make up for decades of ne-
glect. Revamping national rice research systems,
however, requires more than funding, since hu-
man resource capacity has been sharply eroded
by retirement and a lack of investment in higher
university education. A global effort to rebuild
capacity in rice science should be at the top of
the priorities.
The private sector is poised to play an
ever greater role in rice research, as hybrids,
plant varietal protection, and GMOs carry-
ing patents become more widely established.
The growing complexity of science, the rise of
the private sector, and the emerging scientific
strength of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and
China) provide new opportunities for partner-
ships. Making these partnerships function ef-
fectively will be crucial to meeting the major
challenges facing the world rice economy in the
coming decades.
Note:
The book can be ordered at RiceworldBook-
store@cgiar.org and downloaded online at
http://irri.org/books. View video clips shot
during the official launching of the book
during the 3rd International Rice Congress at
http://snipurl.com/1rlh9k.
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