The Philippine-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) has called for a ministerial-level meeting of Asian nations and for focused collective action to solve what it calls the ‘rice price crisis’ in Asia. In a recent meeting at its headquarters, the institute’s board of trustees have discussed issues like need for better farm practices, post harvest management systems, faster release of high-yielding varieties for increased production, training of young scientists etc.
IRRI board member and Philippine secretary of agriculture Arthur C. Yap has called for a ministerial-level meeting of Asian nations to discuss the global rice situation. He said the meeting should include developed and developing countries and focus on increased collaboration to deal with the problems facing rice production and the need for increased food aid in the interim.
“The problems related to rice production and supply in Asia over the past year or more are cause for serious concern, but not for panic,” said Prof. Elizabeth Woods, the newly appointed chair of IRRI’s Board of Trustees. “IRRI and its partners solved similar rice production problems in Asia in the 1960s and 1970s and we can do it again. The problems facing rice production in Asia are not unique to one country; they are shared by nearly all the rice-consuming nations of Asia. We need to work together to find the right solutions. We must also recognise the global scale of the problem, especially the fact that many African nations depend on Asian rice production for their food security,” Prof Woods said.
The Institute is calling for increased focus – from both the public and private sectors – on the following key areas: An agronomic revolution in Asian rice production to reduce existing yield gaps. Farmers must improve their crop management skills that they can better deal with higher input prices and reduce gap between potential and actual production.
It wants faster delivery of new post-harvest technologies for storing, drying, and processing of rice to reduce losses and to introduce higher yielding rice varieties that could increase production.
IRRI wants to strengthen and upgrade the rice breeding and research pipelines. Funding for the development of new rice varieties has steadily declined over the past decade or more, and this must be reversed. Another suggestion is to accelerate research on the world’s thousands of rice varieties so that scientists can tap the vast reservoir of untapped knowledge they contain. And finally it has called for a new generation of rice scientists and researchers for the public and private sectors as education and training of young scientists and researchers from each rice-producing country is a vital concern of the Institute. Asia urgently needs to train a new generation of rice scientists and researchers before the present generation retires.