Maclean et al. - 2002 - Rice almanac source book for the most important e

Rice and food security in
Asia*
Asia accounts for 90% of the world’s
production and consumption of rice
because of its favorable hot and humid
climate. Rice continues to be grown on numerous
tiny farms primarily to meet family needs. The
harvest fluctuates widely because of droughts,
floods, and typhoons. Maintaining self-sufficiency
in production and stability in prices are
important political objectives in most Asian
countries. China, India, and Indonesia account
for three-fourths of global rice consumption.
Increases in yields and
productivity
Prior to the 1960s, rice yields (weight of grain
per hectare) were low and growth of rice
production in Asia was slow, originating mostly
from expansion in cultivated land. Increases in
productivity were occurring but only in the
humid subtropics and temperate zones of East
Asia, where irrigation infrastructure was already
developed. The varieties grown were not
fertilizer-responsive and the relatively poor
market infrastructure contributed to the low-level
application of chemical fertilizers.
The 1960s were characterized by a
prevailing mood of despair regarding the world’s
ability to cope with the food-population balance.
The cultivation frontier was closing in most
Asian countries, while population growth rates
had accelerated because of rapidly declining
mortality rates.
Despite dire predictions at that time, most
Asian countries have done remarkably well so
far in meeting food needs of their growing population.
But this is primarily because those concerns
regarding the food shortages mobilized
financial and scientific resources for research on
food grains, which has succeeded in increasing
the productivity of limited land resources. Over
the last three decades, the Asian population has
increased by nearly 80% but rice production has
doubled (Table 1), contributing to substantial
increases in individual consumption of rice and
calorie intake. Several traditional rice-importing
countries with severe food security problems
(India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam)
achieved self-sufficiency in rice in the 1980s and
Asia’s rice imports declined from 60% to 20%.
More than 84% of the growth in rice
production has come from an increase in productivity
of rice lands, through gradual replacement
of traditional varieties with dwarf and fertilizerresponsive
varieties developed at IRRI and in
national agricultural research institutes. The improved
varieties have enabled farmers to produce
two to three times more from the same parcel of
land. The incorporation of insect and disease resistance
into modern varieties helped stabilize
yields and reduce farmers’ dependence on harmful
agrochemicals. The reduction in crop growth
period from more than 150 days to around 110
days permitted an increase in cropping intensity
and also allowed land to be used for growing
nonrice crops in rice-based farming systems.
Without the impressive growth in productivity,
many Asian countries would have been forced to
further extend cultivation into marginal lands,
thus aggravating the problem of sustaining the
natural resource base.
Despite an increased demand for irrigation
and chemical fertilizers required for full
exploitation of the potential of improved
varieties, technological progress in rice
cultivation led to a decline of about 20% to 30%
in the cost of rice production per unit of output.
Such cost-saving allowed farmers to share the
* From the paper “Sustaining Food Security in the Asian Rice Economy: Achievements and Challenges” by Mahabub Hossain,
Economist and Head, Social Sciences Division, IRRI. This paper was prepared for the seminar on Sustainable Agriculture for the
21st Century, organized by the Indira Gandhi Agricultural University, Raipur, Chhattisgarh, India, 20-21 January 2001.
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