*EPF417 05/09/2002
Byliner: Scientists Work to Develop Better Rice, Researcher Says
(Cantrell says new options help farmers boost production) (2600)

(The following article appears in the May 2002 issue of the State Department's electronic journal, Economic Perspectives. The issue is titled: Food Security and Safety. The entire journal can be viewed at: http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/journals.htm)

There is not enough land, water, or money to produce all the rice the world's growing population needs, says Ronald Cantrell, director general of the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. The challenge for the plant research community, he adds, is to develop efficient and freely available ways to tap into the rice genome sequence to produce higher yielding, more nutritious, and more resistant rice.

Following is the text of Cantrell's article:

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RICE: WHY IT'S SO ESSENTIAL FOR GLOBAL SECURITY AND STABILITY

By Ronald Cantrell, Director General, International Rice Research Institute

What's so special about rice production? Put simply, no other economic activity feeds so many people, supports so many families, is so crucial to the development of so many nations, and has more impact on so much of our environment. Rice production feeds almost half the planet each day, provides most of the main income for millions of poor rural households, can topple governments, and covers 11 percent of the earth's arable area.

But there is something else about rice that many may see as even more impressive and important. That is the enormous success we have had in using rice to improve the lives of world's poor and deprived. By providing rice farmers with options and new technologies -- and so helping them boost production -- extraordinary things have been achieved. In much of Asia, plentiful, cheap rice has been the propelling force behind the region's economic, political, and social stability. Rice has kept the continent nourished, employed, and peaceful.

THE ASIAN MIRACLE

The true Asian miracle hasn't been stunning economic development; it's been keeping people fed and societies stable. This vast continent grows -- and eats -- more than 90 percent of all the world's rice on more than 250 million tiny farms, with most Asians eating rice two or three times a day. Half of every harvest never even leaves the farm: it feeds the family that planted it. Hundreds of millions of poor people spend half to three-fourths of their incomes on rice -- and nothing else. For these people, rice anchors their precarious lives.

Farmers have grown an astounding 2.5 percent more rice each year since 1965. This "extra rice" feeds an additional 600 million people and has helped us stay neck and neck with the ever-growing demand. Increasingly bountiful rice harvests from the late 1970s through the late 1980s -- mainly thanks to high-yielding modern varieties, more irrigation, and more access to credit -- have accounted for nearly four-fifths of this growth. The result? A stunning drop in the real price of rice.

This cheap rice is the single most important contribution rice research and new farming technologies have made in Asia. American researchers have found that the development of improved rice varieties between 1970 and 1995 had a substantial impact in four major areas. Their findings indicate that were it not for the development of improved rice varieties:

-- Rice prices for consumers could have been up to 41 percent higher.

-- Rice-producing nations would be importing up to 8 percent more food.

-- Millions of hectares of forests and other fragile ecosystems would have been lost.

-- Between 1.5 and 2 percent more children would have been malnourished in developing countries.

Such achievements are truly impressive, and it should be reassuring to many that rice research -- and the way it provides options and new technologies to farmers and consumers -- can supply proven solutions to solve the world's environmental, food safety, and security problems.

It's also crucial to note that in achieving these successes, we have helped build capacity and provided training in many of the world's poorest nations. To give just one example, in Cambodia the dreaded Khmer Rouge left only one agricultural scientist alive, slaughtering all other scientists involved in rural work. But as of 2001, not only did that previously impoverished nation achieve basic food security, it also opened the Cambodian Agricultural Research and Development Institute -- an essential bulwark against future famine and deprivation.

FOUR MAJOR CHALLENGES

While we may have a gotten a few things right so far, millions of the world's rice farmers and consumers still live in poverty and destitution. What's urgently needed now is a renewed effort and commitment, where we use the lessons of the past to solve the looming crisis of the future. Four of the biggest problems facing us with rice production -- arguably the most important economic activity on the planet -- can be summed up quite simply: not enough land, labor, water, or cash.

Not enough land because so many of the world's best rice farms are being converted for other activities, such as to accommodate more profitable agriculture, to enable factory construction, or to handle spreading urban sprawl. In turn this has pushed rice farmers into more fragile lands, which in many cases include our last remaining areas of rainforest or other precious environments.

Not enough labor because rice farming is hard, unrewarding work. Most of the world's millions of rice farms are too small to justify or pay for mechanization. And increasingly in the many countries that have achieved food security, factory work is far more attractive than breaking your back ploughing a field in the midday sun.

Not enough water because with traditional, irrigated rice farming, it could take up to 5,000 liters of water to produce just one kilogram of rice. Already research has helped to considerably reduce this amount, but many rice farmers are increasingly being told they must cut back even more as they watch their water supplies be sucked away, usually to ever-expanding cities.

While each of these problems presents huge challenges that will take the very best science has to offer to find solutions, it is the fourth problem -- poverty -- that is perhaps the most daunting of all. In many ways the rice-producing nations of the world have solved their first and most important problem -- they have ensured that their citizens have enough to eat.

But we all should partly share the blame for our failure to achieve a second, equally important goal -- that is, to lift the world's rice farmers and consumers out of the poverty and squalor in which they have been trapped for so long. While this is the bad news, the goods news is that exciting new strategies and tools are emerging to help us deal with poverty -- perhaps the most intractable development problem of all.

THE BURGEONING HYBRID RICE INDUSTRY

To many outsiders one of the most striking aspects of rice production is the fact that such a huge and important industry has so little real private sector activity. Only 6 percent of the world's rice crop is traded internationally, and only in recent years have a small number of big companies involved in agriculture started to invest more in rice. Crop protection firms have been active for many years, but this is the only sector of the rice industry with any major private sector presence.

Therefore, one of the most exciting developments in rice production from the private sector's point of view has been the ongoing spread and development of a hybrid rice industry. Hybrid rice cultivars can out-yield modern, semi-dwarf inbred varieties by more than 20 percent; last year they covered about 15.5 million hectares -- or half of China's rice area -- contributing 57 percent of the country's total rice production. The average hybrid yield is 6.9 tons per hectare, against 5.4 tons per hectare for inbred varieties. From 1976 to 2000 in China, the cumulative cultivated area under hybrid rice totaled 271 million hectares, with the total increase in grain production output at 400 million tons.

In Vietnam, more than 480,000 hectares of hybrid rice is cultivated, while 200,000 hectares were planted in India in 2001. The Philippine government has been one of the most committed to hybrid rice technology, in the hope that it will help to finally provide the nation with its long-cherished goal of rice self-sufficiency.

THE BIOTECHNOLOGY DEBATE

But while hybrid rice may have gotten some of the private sector interested in rice for the first time, it is, of course, biotechnology and its potential impact on so many aspects of rice production that generates the most excitement and controversy. The challenge for all those involved in the biotechnology debate in relation to rice is to ensure that the interests of rice farmers -- most of whom remain illiterate and uneducated -- are fairly and properly represented, while ensuring that they are not deprived of exciting new options they themselves want and need.

While it is essential that traditional varieties and traditional farming practices -- for example -- be carefully protected and preserved, this should not be at the expense of new technologies and options. Many have expressed concern that modern high-yielding rice varieties now dominate rice production at the expense of traditional varieties, thereby reducing the planet's biodiversity. But when researchers successfully use the latest tools of science to produce an exciting new rice variety resistant to a troublesome disease or pest, farmers should have the option to use it, not be made to think they should use only their traditional varieties for the sake of biodiversity.

More exciting, new options -- such as pest-resistant varieties, rice crops that can grow in salty water, and plants better able to resist drought -- will be developed by the private sector, and it is vital that these new opportunities reach those who need them most. At the same time, the interests of rice farmers and consumers must be protected and, more importantly, be better understood.

Clearly there is a role for private sector research in relation to rice and biotechnology, but this cannot and should not be at the expense of farmers and consumers, especially in relation to their health and the environment. However, two well-known examples -- "Golden Rice," or rice enriched with vitamin A, and the decoding of the rice genome by different groups -- amply demonstrate the great potential of biotechnology and, at the same time, bog it in controversy.

While societies in Europe, North America, and Japan have the freedom to debate the pros and cons of their development and consumption of genetically modified organisms, it would be wrong for such debate to impede basic research to study whether such technologies are safe, sustainable, and suitable for the rice-producing nations of the developing world. Such countries must be allowed the right to make their own decisions on biotechnology, which they cannot do if access to such technology is denied to them.

An excellent example of the perils of the biotechnology debate is vitamin A rice. The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) considers rice enriched with vitamin A through genetic modification to be an exciting new option provided by biotechnology. However, many months of research are still required to establish whether this so-called Golden Rice will ever make it into the bowls of rice consumers.

Even before we get to questions on food safety, we must find out if rice enriched with vitamin A will yield well, if it will be resistant to pests and diseases, and if it will affect other functions of the rice plant. Then there are still more important questions to be answered in relation to food safety, consumer acceptability, and biodigestibility.

However, such is the media hype over Golden Rice that the debate is increasingly focused on whether it should be allowed on consumer tables, when we still have not answered far more basic production and development questions. Unless common sense prevails, vitamin A rice may be an idea proposed and rejected, even before we know if it is possible.

DECODING THE RICE GENOME

As for the decoding of the rice genome, clearly it signals a new era not only in the sharing of knowledge for the benefit of mankind by the private sector but also in the use of science to help the poor. However, it is important to stress that despite the great significance of the sequencing work announced by two groups on April 5 of this year, a complete understanding of the rice genome has still not been reached.

The information we have now will be combined with a complete rice genome sequence being compiled by the public International Rice Genome Sequencing Project (IRGSP) coordinated by the Japan Rice Genome Program. This finely detailed IRGSP sequence -- which will have an error rate of less than 0.01 percent -- is expected to be published by the end of this year and will become the gold standard for all future investigations of genetic variation in all crops, not just rice. Knowing the sequence of specific genes will allow us to tap into the natural genetic variation of almost any crop species.

Although achieving food security in any country requires a multitude of social and economic solutions, the new knowledge derived from genomics research will make a vitally important contribution. The challenge ahead for the plant research community is to design efficient, freely available ways to tap into the wealth of rice genome sequence information we now have to address production constraints in an environmentally sustainable manner.

Perhaps like no other crop, therefore, rice needs a strong, well-resourced public research effort. Public institutions like the IRRI are firmly focused on maintaining their roles as "honest brokers" -- ensuring that rice farmers and consumers get the best deal and the best options offered by science and the private sector, while helping companies find ways to get the returns they need to support the further development of their activities and the rice industry.

To give just one, crucially important, example, the next step after the decoding of the rice genome will be to start to identify gene functions in rice. Which gene gives rice its color? Its flavor? Makes it grow well in water? Or makes it grow well when it doesn't rain? Once these functions have been identified they can be patented.

ADDRESSING REMAINING PROBLEMS

IRRI's role here as a broker is clear. Even though such gene function research will require a major investment, this should not prevent poor farmers from having access to any important breakthroughs. It is understandable that, if left to the private sector, the focus will be on gaining a return on such research. But, clearly, the first priority should not be profit, but what will best help the millions of poor rice farmers of the world prosper and develop.

As we continue to grapple with the problems of not enough land, labor, water, and income for the world's most important economic activity, it's clear that, ultimately, we will have the knowledge, skills, and tools we need to solve them. Perhaps the real challenge will not be in finding the answers, but in ensuring that the technologies and opportunities that in many cases are already taken for granted in developed world agriculture can finally reach the rice farmers of the developing world. Doing this will require resources, commitment, and vision. The Green Revolution showed that rice research can help solve even our biggest and most difficult problems. What we need now are the same resources, commitment, and vision to finally solve the big problems that remain.

Note: The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Department of State.

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(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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