Sustainability of rice in the global food system - IRRI books

Table 2. Average farm household income (US$ yr
-1
) by source in selected Asian countries,
1985-88.
Country
Total Sources of income (%)
household
income Rice Nonrice Nonfarm
Bangladesh 977 38 30 32
China 871 43 30 27
India (T. Nadu) 1,010 52 36 12
Indonesia (Lampung) 721 36 44 20
Nepal 1,105 43 46 11
Philippines 1,072 57 18 25
Thailand 1,763 49 20 31
Source: Compiled from unpublished data collected from household surveys under the collaborative IRRI-NARS
project on the Differential Impact of Modern Rice Technology in Favorable and Unfavorable Production Environments.
For country case studies on the production, organization, and impact of modern rice technology, see
David and Otsuka 1994.
Vishnu created rice and God Indra taught mankind how to raise it. China has a saying
that “the most precious things are not jade and pearls, but the five grains,” of which
rice is the first. Death is symbolized in Taiwan by chopsticks stuck into a mound of
rice. Japanese did not use the terms breakfast, lunch, and dinner; the three meals were
asa gohan (morning rice), hiru gohan (afternoon rice), and ban gohan (evening rice).
In China and Bangladesh, a polite way to greet a visitor is to ask, “Have you eaten
your rice today” Even the names of automobile giants Toyota and Honda have their
roots in the rice paddies. The characters for Toyota (originally Toyoda) mean “bountiful
rice field” and Honda “main rice field.” Debts, taxes, rent, and wage payments to
agricultural laborers and rural artisans are still sometimes paid in rice.
Social organization of production
Rice is cultivated on a small scale in fragmented landholdings. The average size of a
farm ranges from 0.43 ha in China to 0.8 to 1.5 ha in most other countries (Table 3).
A1-ha farm is often divided into a large number of parcels. Only in Thailand, Myanmar,
and northwestern and southern India are farm holdings larger, around 3.5 ha. Farm
size varies with population density and land productivity. Regions with fertile land
and a developed irrigation infrastructure generally have small farms.
A high incidence of rural-rural migration redistributes people from low to high
productive areas. The adjustment of population pressure on land across regions within
a country is limited only in countries where land reform laws prohibit the transfer of
cultivation and ownership rights, such as in the Philippines and India (Otsuka 1991).
Rice cultivation is highly labor-intensive. In low-income countries with a labor
surplus, all farm operations are done manually and use more than 150 d of labor for
each ha during a crop season. Transplanting seedlings and controlling weeds alone
require 80 d of labor ha -1 (Sidhu and Baanante 1984). This work is done mostly by
women (Paris 1996). A high degree of seasonality in farm operations, which depend
on the rainfall pattern, requires the use of hired labor even on very small farms. Tra-
22 Hossain