MANILA (AlertNet) Â? The global production of rice is under pressure from dwindling natural resources and a changing climate, and more investment in agriculture is needed to feed a growing population, an industry expert warned.
Rice is one of the most important food crops in the world. Half of the world's population - including two-thirds of the world's 1.3 billion poor living in Asia - eat it as a staple.
It provides a fifth of calories on a global scale and an estimated one billion people depend on rice farming for income, directly or indirectly, said Achim Dobermann, deputy director general for research at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines.
But increasing shortages are likely, particularly as experts predict that climate change will bring a rise in temperatures and sea level as well as more extreme weather.
"Based on the information we have, if temperature rises by 1 degree Celsius, then on average rice yields will go down by 10 percent," Dobermann said.
"What has been talked about in Copenhagen was a plus 2 degrees scenario. So if we don't do anything about (climate change), it's a potential nightmare of losing 20 percent (of rice yield)."
With little agreement on binding carbon emissions cuts, Dobermann said, it is likely "we may end up with a 3 degrees scenario. That makes it much worse for crops."
Researchers are working on ways to feed a world population that is expected to rise to 9 billion people by 2050, just as climate change threatens to decrease harvests in many parts of the world by bringing worsening droughts, floods, saltwater intrusion and other problems.
A hotter climate may allow areas currently too cold to plant rice to harvest the crop, but this will gain be much smaller compared than expected losses in the main rice growing areas, Dobermann said.
Founded by the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation in 1960, IRRI is the largest non-profit agricultural research centre in Asia. It helped kick-start the Green Revolution in the 1960s that used new rice varieties to boost harvests in the region and curb hunger and dependence on food aid.
RICE DELTAS THREATENED
According to Dobermann, an estimated 60 percent of the additional rice production produced by the Green Revolution has come from major river deltas in Asia. If low-lying nations in Asia lose millions of hectares of cropland as a result of sea level rise, that could spell trouble for consumers around the world.
Countries such as Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam and China already lose as much as 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres) of rice land each year, mostly to urbanization, he said.
Figures from the Food and Agricultural Organisation show there were over 156 million hectares (385 million acres) of rice land in the world in 2007.
Increasingly severe storms also present a threat. In 2008, Cyclone Nargis flooded nearly 800,000 hectares (1.97 million acres) of rice fields in Myanmar while Typhoon Ketsana in 2009 wiped out 500,000 hectares (1.24 million acres) of rice crops in the Philippines.
To cope with the growing problems, Dobermann said, IRRI has shifted the focus of much of its work to climate adaptation. It has already released rice varieties that are resistant to drought and submergence, and is working on varieties tolerant to salinity and heat, among other problems, he said.
Some African countries, such as Mozambique and Tanzania, have the potential to bring millions of hectares of land into rice production. But experts are concerned about a growing move by richer nations to sign long-term leases on farmland in Africa, aimed at boosting their own food security rather than Africa's.
Growing water shortages, particularly for agriculture, also threaten rice production. With industry, farmers and households all competing for water, about 15 to 20 million hectares (37 to 49 million acres) of rice are expected to suffer water scarcity problems within 25 years, Dobermann said.
Already, China and many southeast Asian countries are struggling with severe drought and low levels of water in the Mekong River.
GROWING POPULATION
Global population growth will only increase the severity of water and rice shortages, experts say. If the world population, currently 6 billion, reaches the predicted level of 9 billion by 2050, an extra 650 million more people will be eating rice, especially as rice consumption grows in countries that did not traditionally eat rice, experts predict.
"Africa is an emerging rice market," said Dobermann. "Consumption of rice in Africa is growing at 6 percent every year, much faster than Asia. Nearly 50 percent of sub-Saharan rice consumption is imported, mainly from Asia."
He attributes the phenomenon to an emerging middle class in Africa, with the resources to pay for imported rice, and to rice's ease of preparation compared to alternatives such as wheat or cassava.
Boosting rice yields may prove particularly difficult because agricultural research funding has been neglected for decades by both donors and governments, observers and industry experts say.
According to Harvard academic Peter Timmer, in 1985 aid donors allocated about 13 percent of their project budgets to agriculture. By 2006, that had fallen to 4 percent.
A recent international study said a net investment of $83 billion a year - an increase of almost 50 percent from current levels - is needed to meet U.N. projections of food demand in 2050.
Dobermann said IRRI itself has seen funds dwindle for 12 consecutives years before making a small turnaround in the past two years.
NATURAL OR MODIFIED?
IRRI has come under criticism from some quarters for working on genetically modified (GM) rice. China recently approved widespread planting of GM crops and the Philippines may follow suit with a Vitamin A-enriched grain IRRI developed.
Dobermann said GM constitutes only a small portion of its research and most of the climate-resilient rice it has produced is based on inserting specific genes from existing natural rice species into more widely cultivated varieties.
IRRI has a rice gene bank with over 110,000 species, some of them naturally resistant to drought, submersion, saltwater and other problems related to climate change.
Nevertheless, GM rice will come, Dobermann said, especially when naturally occurring rice species do not have certain valuable characteristics, such as the ability to produce precursors of Vitamin A.
Vitamin A deficiency is common among many poor populations.
Relying entirely on naturally bred crop varieties, to the exclusion of GM crops, may not be possible as the world's population soars, he said.
"It's impossible to feed this kind of population density with just one method," he said.
To do so would require a lot more land. And "that would mean chopping down more forests and destroying peat," activities that emit high levels of climate-changing carbon emissions, he said.
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