Global rice prices forecast to rise soon

June, 13 2011
By Le Hung Vong
VNS

World rice prices have remained stable for the past year but that could change soon.

According to the Manila-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), rice prices have remained relatively stable, rising only 17 per cent since June last year against a 50-150 per cent hike seen in the prices of other crops.

This has been mainly due to the increased supply. In 2010 Thailand, Viet Nam, and the US exported 9 million tonnes, 6.8 million tonnes, and 5.5 million tonnes respectively. With weather conditions being favourable, rice production in Cambodia, India, and Bangladesh is expected to increase this year.

The IRRI said, however, the rise in the prices of other crops could make some Asian countries like Indonesia, Myanmar, and Bangladesh either expand their reserves or impose bans on rice exports.

Global rice prices, which are expected to increase anyway this year due to the drought in China, would be forced up by the policy, though they are unlikely to hit the records seen in 2008 in Asia.

Rice Shortage Scares: Would The Real Culprits Please Step Forward?

Thursday, November 19, 2009
By WILLIAM BOOT
The Irrawady News

BANGKOK — Alarms about a possible new Asian rice crisis on the back of last year’s “shortages” may be nothing more than scaremongering to keep prices up while a much more serious problem is developing almost unnoticed.

New shortage fears surfaced around the sidelines of an international rice conference in the Philippines last month and have been repeated since.

They have been based on reports of bad weather slashing crop volumes in India, the Philippines and Vietnam.

But the fact is that record quantities of rice are being hoarded by key producers Thailand, India and China.

Figures just published by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) show that India is sitting on up to 25 million tonnes and Thailand as much as 8 million tonnes, while China probably holds about 50 percent of the world’s rice stocks at any one time.

Even poor Burma claimed earlier this month to have 1 million tonnes surplus available for export.

These figures belie predictions that bad weather this year in India, the Philippines and Vietnam will cause a rice shortage that could spark regional shortages and rocketing prices.

The USA Rice federation says India could distort the market by buying between 1 million and 3.5 million tonnes next year, and storm damage in the Philippines will force that country to sharply increase its imports.

But the Philippines’ National Food Authority says for the moment the country has sufficient stock to avoid unplanned buying which could push up market prices.

Unfounded shortage scares in late 2007 and early 2008 caused panic buying and overreaction by governments and the market which sent prices climbing, triggering export curbs.

And contrary to claims that prices have never come back down since then, the IRRI says average rice prices in Asia are 60 percent lower today than their May 2008 panic rates.

However, last year’s major intervention in the market by several governments has led to state hoarding, says the IRRI.

“One of the undesirable outcomes of raising the [state] support level has been the diversion of rice away from the market to government warehouses,” says the Philippines-based IRRI in a new report.

A much bigger problem for future rice supply is declining crop yield. Although the amount of land being planted with rice is expanding, the production level per hectare is declining, says the IRRI.

“Irrespective of what happens to the market in the next few months, the fundamental problem for achieving global rice security, sagging yield growth, has yet to be addressed,” reports the IRRI in its latest issue of Rice Today.

“Over the past eight years, nearly half of the production increase has been attributed to area expansion rather than productivity growth,” it said.

These figures indicate that land under rice cultivation globally is at an all-time high, yet yield growth per hectare is declining while consumption rises 1.5 percent a year.

“With further area expansion less likely in the future, productivity growth must be ramped up if we want to feed the hundreds of millions of poor people,” said the IRRI.

Attempts to establish a form of rice cartel in Southeast Asia with the aim of managing the market and prices have so far failed, mainly because of the huge disparity in standards of production and costs between the countries that have expressed an interesting in joining—Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Burma.

A rice industry official in Thailand, who did not wanted to be named because of the sensitive nature of the subject, said Cambodia, Laos and Burma have little or no verifiable production information.

“They produce poor quality rice which sells at the bottom end of the market compared to Thailand’s quality crops,” he said.

Rainy-Day Rice Asian farmers will get a disaster-proof version of an essential crop

Wet Work: Farmers plant rice seedlings in Thailand Philip Blenkins/Getty Images

12.18.2008
By Melinda Dodd
Popular Science

After years of testing in muddy fields, genetically enhanced flood-resistant rice is about to hit agricultural markets in tropical Asia, following Indonesia, with India and Bangladesh up for approval later this year. Cambodia, Laos, Nepal, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam are expected to follow suit.

It's a major step forward for weatherproof crops, increasingly touted as essential to the long-term future of the world's food supply. Advances in biotechnology have improved this ancient grain, which accounts for up to 70 percent of daily calories for people living in Asian countries. Imperiled by constant floods, rising sea levels and natural disasters, submerged rice survives just four days when deprived of light and oxygen. These new varieties last eight to 18 days.

The advance is urgently needed. "At least [58,000 square miles] of land in South and Southeast Asia are vulnerable to flooding, and floods will only increase," says Dave Mackill, a senior scientist with Manila's International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). In 2007, Cyclone Sidr destroyed 1.25 million tons of rice in Bangladesh; last year, multiple typhoons wiped out rice paddies in Vietnam.

To find a suitable template for the flood-resistant rice, Mackill turned to India's water-tolerant FR13A rice. Farmers stopped using the strain because of its poor yield, but its resilience intrigued him. To pinpoint the part of the rice genome carrying the trait, Mackill crossbred a hardy derivative of FR13A with another rice strain and derived 4,000 other rice plants from that cross. Geneticist Pamela Ronald of the University of California at Davis then searched the plants' DNA and unearthed Sub1A, a gene that triggers the grain to conserve energy when it is underwater. To create the final rice strain, Mackill cross-pollinated a Sub1A-containing plant with a high-yielding, better-tasting Indian rice variety.

In the coming years, IRRI researchers will supplement Sub1-class rice with a gene that resists flooding during the sensitive germination stage (something the Sub1 genes can't do). Also on the agenda: drought- and salt-resistant rice, now testing in nearly every Southeast Asian tropical country and China. Asia's inland and coastal areas often have salt-filled soil, which stunts rice growth.

The IRRI has already made its rice seed available to other research institutions and has been distributing it to Asian farmers for free. When sold by other seed growers on the commercial markets, the price should rival that of common varieties. "We anticipate adoption wherever submergence is a regular problem," Mackill says. If the rice is a success, climate-resistant crops may spread across the developing world, as well as the developed.

Vietnam rice troubles could affect region: expert

A vendor puts rice into a bag for sale at a rice market in Ho Chi Minh city (Photo: AFP)

LOS BANOS, Philippines (AFP) — Vietnam's farm sector is reeling from outbreaks of pests and disease that could threaten its neighbours including China, according to one of the world's leading rice experts.

Hanoi and the world scientific community have yet to find a way to prevent another crop failure following a virus attack on rice crops last year, said Robert Zeigler, head of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).

Vietnam is the fifth-largest rice producer and number three exporter in the world, and last year's troubles hit some of the best rice-growing areas, Zeigler told AFP in an interview at the Institute, just south of Manila.

"The fact is, they got taken by surprise and they had some significant yield losses that they were just not expecting," he said.

"Of course we are concerned about Vietnam. But some of these pests can migrate up into China, and who knows if could they move up and cause some serious problems?"

He noted that, while China is not a key player in the international rice trade, the country is by far the world's largest producer and consumer of the grain.

Vietnam also lies close to Thailand, the world's top rice exporter, and rich rice-growing areas in Myanmar and Cambodia.

Zeigler said the IRRI is monitoring the potential impact of the severe winter in China on its rice crops, both in the north where only one crop is grown a year and in the south where the usually milder climate allows for multiple planting seasons every year.

The troubles have helped lead to spiralling prices, with many nations relying on Vietnamese exports. Prices have soared to more than 700 dollars a tonne, more than three times the rate of five years ago.

Along with other disasters such as flooding in Java and a devastating cyclone in Bangladesh, the Vietnam troubles -- a viral disease called tungro and infestations of the brown planthopper insect -- have also led to global supplpies being drained.

Zeigler said it was still not clear why the pest and virus attacks had swept across the southern and central regions of Vietnam.

"We're faced with a lot of unknowns," said the American, who has headed the Institute -- credited for developing high-yield rice strains in the 1960s that helped lift hundreds of millions in Asia out of poverty -- since 2005.

"(Farmers) did shift varieties and they shifted the way they managed those varieties, and so we're still trying to sort out whether it was some change in the strain or it was the change in the management practices, or both," he said.

Zeigler said nations in the region and across the world needed to invest more in agricultural research, now that the vast yield gains seen since the 1960s have begun to flatten out.

"To some extent we can lay the blame ... on reduced investment in agricultural research in the last 15 years," he said. The IRRI, first set up with funds from US foundations, is supported by government donors worldwide.

"Certainly the kinds of things that took (Vietnam) by surprise are areas of work that IRRI had to cut back on in the last five to 10 years because of budget cuts," he said.