Contents & Foreword, Characterizing And ... - IRRI books

Rice is the staple food crop for more than half the world’s population. Its popularityhas increased steadily, not only in rice-eating countries but also in countries wheretraditionally it is not an important food crop. The slowdown in the growth of riceproduction is serious because of the continuing growth of population. Sustainablerice production in the near future therefore requires more efforts to improve rice productivityand to bring more land area into rice cultivation. During the past three decades,substantial efforts have been made to characterize and classify the environmentsof agricultural production, especially the production of important food cropssuch as rice. The results of these exercises have been applied in developing cropproduction technologies, expanding new crop areas, transferring technologies, andothers. Recently, results of characterization and classification of environments havealso been applied in assessing investments in agricultural research.Rice yields are affected by variety, ecological conditions during the growingseason, and socioeconomic factors that affect farmers’ crop management. Rice cropsyield highest when planted in the best-suited environments. Factors affecting riceproduction, however, have evolved much during the past three decades and need tobe included in future efforts to characterize and classify the environments of riceproduction. In the competitive markets created by the globalization of the worldeconomy, improving rice productivity and expanding rice areas must be done in themost efficient manner. Public investments in rice research have also been declining.In the future, therefore, characterizing and classifying the environments of rice productionmust take into consideration the following areas: universality, completeness,objectiveness, and scales and costs.The challenge to the world’s rice productionRice is the world’s most important food crop. In 1997, about 2.9 billion people dependedmainly on rice for food calories and protein. The popularity of rice has alsoincreased in Africa and Latin America, where traditionally rice has not been an importantfood crop. The worldwide annual growth rates of population and rice production,harvested area, and yield since 1970 (Table 1) show that world rice productionhas increased continuously, but at varying growth rates. The annual growth rate was2.7% in the 1970s, 3.1% in the 1980s, and 1.3% in the first half of the 1990s. Acomparison between the growth rates of rice production and population since 1970shows that, for the first time since 1990, rice production has grown more slowly thanpopulation.During the 1970s, the high annual growth rate of rice production was caused byboth a high increase in yield and a moderate increase in rice area, whereas the rapidgrowth in rice production during the 1980s came principally from improvements inrice productivity. Rice yield grew 1.8% annually in the 1970s, 2.8% in the 1980s, andonly 1.1% in the first half of the 1990s, whereas the annual growth rate of harvestedrice area decreased from 0.8% during the 1970s to 0.2% in the 1980s (Table 1).The trend of reduced growth of rice harvested area indicates that future riceproduction increases will come mainly from improvements in productivity unless34 Van Nguu Nguyen