Free trade, changing diets to put pressure on rice production
Wednesday, 24 October 2007
MANILA, Oct 23 (AFP): Free trade, changing diets, and rapid urbanisation is leading to a decline in rice production, one of the world's leading experts on the crop said.
"As prosperous rice-growing countries move toward free trade in agricultural production, they may increasingly find it difficult to sustain producers' interest in rice farming," said Mahabub Hossain, a former economist at the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute.
Writing in the forthcoming issue of the quarterly IRRI journal Rice Today he said the potential for increased productivity followed the Green Revolution that lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in Asia.
He said global rice demand growth has slowed as rapid urbanisation and rising per capita income in middle and high- income countries in Asia and Latin America prompt people to diversify their diets, while population control has reduced population growth rates in rice-eating China, Malaysia and Thailand.
However, he said this may be offset by "increased consumption due to poverty reduction among low-income households" in such areas as West Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and South America, where rapid migration to urban areas has led to changes in diets from ones based on maize or root crops to rice-based ones.
Hossain said urbanisation would lead to "economic pressure to reduce the area under rice cultivation to accommodate agricultural diversification in favour of higher-value crops" and as rice lands are converted to meet the demand for housing, factories and roads.
Meanwhile, increased urban migration is "leading to rural labour shortages and higher rural labour wage rates, further discouraging labour-intensive rice farming."
Hossain said rice farms that depend on seasonal rainfall, which accounts for 45 per cent of global rice farming, "will have to bear the major burden of a future increase in rice production."
"As prosperous rice-growing countries move toward free trade in agricultural production, they may increasingly find it difficult to sustain producers' interest in rice farming," said Mahabub Hossain, a former economist at the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute.
Writing in the forthcoming issue of the quarterly IRRI journal Rice Today he said the potential for increased productivity followed the Green Revolution that lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in Asia.
He said global rice demand growth has slowed as rapid urbanisation and rising per capita income in middle and high- income countries in Asia and Latin America prompt people to diversify their diets, while population control has reduced population growth rates in rice-eating China, Malaysia and Thailand.
However, he said this may be offset by "increased consumption due to poverty reduction among low-income households" in such areas as West Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and South America, where rapid migration to urban areas has led to changes in diets from ones based on maize or root crops to rice-based ones.
Hossain said urbanisation would lead to "economic pressure to reduce the area under rice cultivation to accommodate agricultural diversification in favour of higher-value crops" and as rice lands are converted to meet the demand for housing, factories and roads.
Meanwhile, increased urban migration is "leading to rural labour shortages and higher rural labour wage rates, further discouraging labour-intensive rice farming."
Hossain said rice farms that depend on seasonal rainfall, which accounts for 45 per cent of global rice farming, "will have to bear the major burden of a future increase in rice production."