With Rice Stocks At Lowest In 30 Years, World's Leading Expert Notes "Worrisome Signs" For Future

[hatrack]

MANILA (AFP) - The world's top rice expert warned here Friday of "worrisome signs," with high prices for rice and fertiliser and stocks at their lowest levels for about 30 years.

Robert Zeigler, director general of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), said new farm technologies were needed to replicate the gains made from the "Green Revolution," which had lifted hundreds of millions of rural Asians out of poverty.

"There are a number of worrisome signs suggesting that new challenges lie ahead," he told an international rural poverty conference in the Philippine capital Manila.

"There has been a slowdown in growth in rice production as the yield gains from the adoption of the modern varieties in the irrigated areas have become almost fully exploited and the rice area is declining," Zeigler said. "Over the past five years, (the) international rice price has doubled and price for urea (fertiliser) tripled, the latter spurred on by the rise in oil prices."

EDIT

http://www.philstar.com/index.php?News%20Flash&p=54&type=2&sec=91&aid=2007081031

[villager]

1. is this why the price of my rice milk at Trader Joe's just shot up?

I swear, it thought it'd be cheaper to eat lower on the food chain -- and usually it is, but in the "dairy" dept, the faux/non- cow stuff doesn't enjoy the price subsidies the bovine-derived offerings do...

[GliderGuider]

2. Peak Rice?

"The yield gains from the adoption of the modern varieties in the irrigated areas have become almost fully exploited and the rice area is declining."

How about a rousing chorus of "Malthus was right after all! Told you so, told you so."

[hatrack]

3. Good thing rapid climate destabilization could never hurt crop production, huh?

And to think I used to worry about such things.

[kestrel91316]

4. Instead of Peak Oil, it appears that Peak Food may just be our

most immediate concern......

Stock up on those garden seeds, folks. Plant fruit trees in your yard instead of exotic ornamentals. Learn how to produce and process your own food. For those with a little more land (1/2 acre+), learn how to plant, harvest, and process corn as a grain crop (YES, it can be done all by hand easily). Get yourself some chickens and rabbits. And hang onto your hats, it's gonna be a rough ride.

[amandabeech]

6. I used to shuck corn for my grandmother's chickens.

The corn was grown on the old farm with mechanization, but not lots of fertilizer inputs besides cattle manure. The chickens ate what they could find when the garden was not in full production (they were free range otherwise), and ate lots of hand-shucked corn during the winter. My grandmother or one of us grandchildren usually did the shucking.

For the uninitiated, "shucking" corn means to remove the dry kernels from a dry ear of corn. Chi

[ChairmanAgnostic]

5. here's an idea. Let's use rice to create gasohol, that ought to boost production

and increase rice availability, right?

[amandabeech]

7. ". . . and rice growing area is declining."

That could mean climate change from global warming OR it could be "development" of rice fields into industry or housing.

In the U.S., at least prior to the last few years' droughts, there has been a major reduction of good, generally well watered farmland due to "development" otherwise known as sprawl. The problem is incredibly acute on the east coast and in the midwest.

At what point will we in the U.S. be unable to export food or even feed ourselves decently (less corn-fed beef) because we have destroyed too much high quality farmland? To my mind, we must redevelop urban and suburban land, reduce house size and stabilize our population.

Anyone?

[bananas]

8. Neither - it's because of "double-cropping"

http://www.irri.org/publications/today/pdfs/6-3/19-21.pdf

According to
the Food and
Agriculture
Organization
of the United
Nations (FAO),
the global rice
area harvested
in 2005 was
153 million
hectares. The amount of land used for
rice is less, in the order of 127 million
hectares, because in some fields
farmers plant two, or even three,
rice crops each year. One hectare
of double-cropped land therefore
provides 2 hectares of rice area each
year (areas referred to hereafter
are harvested areas, as opposed to
actual land areas).

[amandabeech]

9. Thanks for the info. n/t

[phantom power]

10. Interesting. you gotta wonder what that does to the soil nutrient budget.