From the “I love the smell of rice-a-roni in the morning” department and the Global Rice Science Partnership, we have adaptation to a warmer more CO2 laden world. It’s another “Ehrlich population bomb were all gonna starve” moment shot to hell. – Anthony
Scientists launch global scheme to boost rice yields while reducing damage to environment
Millions will escape hunger and poverty in a widening campaign to achieve global food security and deliver major environmental gains within 25 years
Hanoi, Vietnam (November 10, 2010)—One of the world’s largest global scientific partnerships for sustainable agricultural development has launched a bold new research initiative that aims to dramatically improve the ability of rice farmers to feed growing populations in some of the world’s poorest nations. The efforts of the Global Rice Science Partnership, or GRiSP, are expected to lift 150 million people out of poverty by 2035 and prevent the emission of greenhouse gases by an amount equivalent to more than 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide.
An initiative of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and led by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and its partners, GRiSP was launched in Hanoi today at the 3rd International Rice Congress. The new global initiative will lead scientists to embark on the most comprehensive attempt ever to deploy rice’s genetic diversity. Cutting-edge research aimed at discovering new rice genes and deciphering their functions will feed into accelerated efforts to break the yield barrier in rice and to breed new generations of “climate-ready” rice with flooding tolerance and other traits that are essential for adapting production in the face of climate change. The initiative is expected to boost supplies enough to reduce anticipated increases in rice prices by an average of at least 6.5% by 2020, and at least 13% by 2035.
“Given that rice is a staple food for more than half the global population and in most of the developing world, there is no question that availability of rice is equated with food security,” said Dr. Robert Zeigler, Director General of IRRI, a member of the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers.
According to Zeigler, GRiSP has the potential to contribute significantly to lowering food prices, which he says should lift about 72 million people out of poverty by 2020. This effect is measured by counting the lower costs as projected income gains worth US$11 billion, thus reducing global poverty by 5% and 11% by 2035.
At the same time, GRiSP research will significantly reduce emissions of greenhouse gases from rice production through the adoption of improved irrigation methods and by avoiding deforestation. More than 1.2 million hectares of forest, wetlands, and other natural ecosystems will be saved by 2035 because rice production will not need to expand into new areas, thanks to higher rice yields.
The launch of GRiSP marks the beginning of a 5 year nearly $US600 million endeavor. While GRiSP builds on existing research, development, and funding, it requires additional new financial support to raise annual funding for rice research from around 100 million in 2011 to 139 million in 2015 to fully realize its potential.
“GRiSP is the opening gambit in a wider campaign to secure the world’s food supply within 25 years,” said Mr. Carlos Pérez del Castillo, Chair of the Board of the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers. The Consortium of Centers was formed recently in a major reorganization of the CGIAR that is responsible for providing financial support for the implementation of the CGIAR Research Programs (CRPs).
“In the coming months,” he added, “the CGIAR will launch further high-quality international research programmes that form part of a comprehensive vision, with clear impact-oriented targets, for reduction in poverty and hunger, improvements in health and nutrition, and enhanced resilience of the world’s ecosystems. We welcome the CGIAR donor support for these new programs.”
The initiative will also promote revolutionary transformations in rice agronomy, processing, and policy. The overall goal will be to serve farmers and consumers by increasing yields using improved seeds and agricultural practices, and by reducing postharvest losses (estimated at 20-30 percent of developing country production).
As part of a vigorous effort to strengthen national research capacities, the program will offer hundreds of developing country professionals—at least 30 percent of them women—the opportunity to take part in degree programs and training courses.
This global partnership is led by IRRI along with AfricaRice and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and includes two French organizations, the Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD) and L’Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), as well as the Japan International Research Centre for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS), with hundreds of other partners worldwide representing governments, the private sector and civil society. These partners actively shaped the research agenda of GRiSP and will play key roles in its implementation. GRiSP provides an example of how the CGIAR will operate in the future and which other research programmes will emulate.
GRiSP embodies key recommendations of Never an Empty Bowl: Sustaining Food Security in Asia, an international taskforce report released in late September by IRRI and the Asia Society. Calling for new efforts to “raise and sustain the productivity of rice farmers,” the report proposes innovative mechanisms to pay for this work, including one in which rice-growing nations would fund rice research on the basis of the value of domestic production.
GRiSP—the Global Rice Science Partnership—is an international alliance with hundreds of research and development partners worldwide that represents for the first time ever, a single strategic and work plan for global rice research. GRiSP aims to reduce poverty and hunger, improve human health and nutrition, reduce the environmental footprint and enhance ecosystem resilience of rice production systems through high-quality international rice research, partnership, and leadership. The International Rice Research Institute (www.irri.org) leads GRiSP and principal partners within the CGIAR include AfricaRice and CIAT.
The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is a global partnership that unites organizations engaged in research for sustainable development with the funders of this work. The funders include developing and industrialized country governments, foundations, and international and regional organizations. The work they support is carried out by 15 members of the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers, in close collaboration with hundreds of partner organizations, including national and regional research institutes, civil society organizations, academia, and the private sector. www.cgiar.org – http://cgiarconsortium.cgxchange.org.
Scattershooting:
It seems to me a better acronym would have emerged if the outfit’s name were changed from Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) to Consultative International Group on Agricultural Research (CIGAR).
I am not generally against genetic modification beyond the slight Luddite reaction to any science or technology I don’t understand. It’s the curse of humanity. I would, as a result of that innate Luddism, prefer that natural mutations of crops that exhibit desired traits be bred for production with other preferred strains. :shrug: Whichever works.
Wouldn’t it much more cost effective to spread that billion pounds of CO₂ over the fields?
Nikolai Vavilov did great work in crop study, yields and varieties of cereal grains. He collected samples from all over the world and characterized their properties. Unfortunately he starved to death in prison during Stalins rule because his ideas based on genetics fell out of political favor due to the false science of vernalization. This isn’t the first time that science has been determined by politics.
The following below are the main International Centers for food crop research.
They are staffed by the best and brightest food and crop scientists from every nation. Without these centers which are almost unknown amongst the general public there would already be wide spread hunger and famine right across the planet but over more than 5 decades the scientists of these major world food grain / plant and livestock research centers, without publicity or without any thoroughly deserved recognition of their immense achievements have made huge advances in yield increases, disease resistance, pest control, grain food quality, drought resistance and a numerous other attributes in our global food crops and livestock.
Unfortunately in our western media almost the entire concentration has been on the role of the northern hemisphere chemical and crop production corporations with the hostile to advancement, environmental movement in particular openly denigrating any and all advances in food crop research and production.
The major world food centers listed below which are funded by international agreement have over the last decade suffered severe funding cuts from the backwash of this very negative publicity generated by the environmental movement which has for it’s own self glorification, generated and spread anti food research propaganda amongst the public for many years now.
Yet it is from these World Centers that the greatest advances in food production have come from over the last half century with the consequence that all the previous and numerous forecasts of impending catastrophic global food shortages and global famine that have been promulgated over the last 60 years by numerous self styled experts have never come about.
Nor are the public at all aware that there is a very wide spread network of high tech repositories where the seeds of all of the world’s food crops and the collections of seeds from the wild grasses and plants where all of mankind’s food crops have originated from are stored in these repositories.
These repositories supply seeds, sometimes no more than two or three seeds from say a rare grass that may have been collected somewhere in central Asia [ where our modern grain crops originated from ] to crop breeders and researchers somewhere else in the world to enable crosses to be made from which that breeder hopes he / she may incorporate another desirable gene group such as another disease resistant gene into his / her new variety of crop.
If the breeder succeeds and that will only be say one successful commercial variety from say 20 or 30, 000 crosses and a decade of work then mankind adds another small capability to his ability to continue to feed our growing global population and with a higher quality product.
There is a very sophisticated system of cross national food grain research centers which are all closely interlinked through research co-operation , constant science personnel interchanges, plant breeding material interchange and numerous unpublicised interchanges and conferences amongst that grossly underpublicised group of Crop Science researchers on whose science the entire world now unknowingly and apparently uncaring for relies on for their entire food supplies both now and long into the future.
Without these Crop Science researchers famine would have regularly stalked the planet for most of the last half century.
And their reward is far lower pay than the celebrated and totally non productive climate scientists and a complete absence of recognition and a casual dismissal of their achievements by a very well fed public.
Below is the list of the major international food research centers;
Africa Rice Center
Bioversity International
CIAT – Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical
CIFOR – Center for International Forestry Research
CIMMYT – Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maiz y Trigo
CIP – Centro Internacional de la Papa
ICARDA – International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas
ICRISAT – International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics
IFPRI – International Food Policy Research Institute
IITA – International Institute of Tropical Agriculture
ILRI – International Livestock Research Institute
IRRI – International Rice Research Institute
IWMI – International Water Management Institute
World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)
WorldFish Center
From; http://www.cgiar.org/centers/index.html
Genetic changes? breeding new strains of rice?
seems to me that for 600 million dollars you could buy tractors for farming communities and make a real difference.
One Norman Borlaug is worth a million climate “scientists”.
Isn’t “sustainable agriculture” an example of redundant wording?
I think you’ve missed the point here. By starting this you-beaut new program to increase crop yield, when the added CO2 boosts plant growth, as we, and they, know it must, they will then be able to say they did it.
new generations of “climate-ready” rice with flooding tolerance
I thought the stuff grows in flooded fields.
Dave Wendt says:
November 10, 2010 at 3:45 pm
“One wonders what Norman Borlaug might have been able to accomplish with access to that kind of dough.”
Precisely my first thought. One Norman is worth a world full of grifters like the ones in this story. Isn’t this about the third iteration of the miracle rice story in the last 40 years? Somebody just plant the damn stuff and let’s feed the people.
If you want to know what really happens if you actually feed the world’s poor; or at least those of the poor nations.
Well that experiment has been tried.
People who have successfully overpopulated their own countries; beyond their ability to provide food for their masses; are now moving to California; and they immediately set about producing as many children as they did back in their own country; but whereas in those third world countries a big fraction of those kids didn’t survive the lack of food; here in the USA they have plenty of food; but still the parents don’t pay any heed to the fact that now ALL of their children are surviving; they just keep on reproducing; haven’t learned a thing from having no shortage of food now.
And for the legal disclaimer; I don’t care how many children anybody wants to have; just provide for them yourself; and don’t expect others to do it for you.
“One of the world’s largest…global…sustainable…bold new…dramatically…most comprehensive…diversity…Cutting-edge…accelerated efforts…essential…there is no question…deforestation…high-quality international…a comprehensive vision…revolutionary transformations…vigorous effort…hundreds of other partners…worldwide…key roles…key recommendations…international taskforce…innovative mechanisms…hundreds of R&D partners…for the first time ever….”
Does this set your propaganda detector off? It does mine.
Gary wrote, “I wonder why the meeting wasn’t held in Saigon rather than Hanoi”. That’s because Hanoi is the seat of the central govt while Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh) is the commercial center. Since CGIAR and IRRI projects are govt projects, they seek the blessing and approval of central govt officials. From rice to climate, it’s all politics for them.
I thought this sort of thing was already going on around the world. Are these guys just trying to cash in on their “climate-ready rice” slogan?
The anti-GMO “much bad magic” medeival superstition expressed on this thread threatens to undermine WUWT’s reputation for scientific objectivity. Anti-GMO is as perniciously anti-intellectual anti-science class war as the CAGW and anti-nuclear movements.
Our human genome contains an untidy assemblage of DNA cut and pasted from numerous different organisms including viruses, all by 100% natural processes. GMO introduces nothing fundamentally new and dangerous – not a single one of the catastrophist scare stories has come to pass. WUWT posters should hold themselves to a higher intellectual standard of scientific objectivity and understanding.
Genetic technology as reported here is a very positive thing for humanity and should be supported.
So with the skills suggested by that press release, shall I assume there will be no rice crop in x years?
Being anti-GMO not does not threaten WUWT’s scientific integrity, in fact, quite the opposite. Honest crop scientists do not need to feel threatened. Surely no one one this site is opposed to research that would lead to the betterment of mankind. However, if one is getting their information right off the Monsanto website, his view of the wonderful world of GMOs will be skewed like a ,ummm, hockey stick. This is the company that left a town to die from exposure to PCBs, it talks honest farmers into inoculating their milk cows with rBST which has negative effects on the cows and those drinking the milk, and animals fed GMO soy products do not thrive. These are just a few examples. Next we are getting a new Frankenfish — just legalized.
Most famine in the world is caused by wars. Native populations are often denied their means of survival by outsiders who instigate warfare for greedy reasons. (Why is my oil, cobalt, gold … buried under your soil?) If you read Weston Price, a truly honest scientist, you will learn that before western intervention most natural societies got along just fine. His surprising finding (backed up with over 50,000 photographs and years of research) was that the native populations, though lagging in technology were light years ahead in understanding what made for healthy humans. When you consider that cancer rates and degenerative diseases are at an all time high, you should look at the food supply first. The science is not settled.
There is a much better way to achieve this same goal:
Let the countries industrialize. With full industrialized farming methods, the yields of crops go up, the land needed for farming goes down, and people are free to do things with their lives outside of farming. This is what the industrial revolution has done for all of the other nations of the Earth.
A lot of people have pointed out the use of GMO’s, which although they might allow a higher yields, the third world can get much better yields simply by fully industrializing and using industrial techniques in farming such as tractors instead of animals…
The end effect of this : Lowers CO2 consumption after awhile and lets lands sit fallow free to be homes to Gaia’s little critters. In addition, allows more people to live in cities (Ivory Towers) and pass judgement on others and tell them how they should live their lives.
I often think that this is the issue (and ironic to boot).. to an environmentalist, industrialization is bad when in fact without industry, the environmentalist would not exist since he would be too busy farming to care about the environment.
I should put a disclaimer: When I say environmentalist, I mean the modern breed who has lost site of being a true steward to the planet and just wants socialism.
Maybe I have to read the announcement again. It seemed like “We hope to improve rice production at some time in the dimly seen future so please praise and support us now.”
phlogiston says:
November 10, 2010 at 7:26 pm
The anti-GMO “much bad magic” medeival superstition expressed on this thread threatens to undermine WUWT’s reputation for scientific objectivity
I will agree with you that genetic modifications have been happening continually in food plants either by chance randomly or by choice and the extensive use of grafting.
In my country garden there is a wild olive tree ( coming up from seed) that has nice big olives. I could see the gleam in a forefather’s eye who would choose to graft from this tree the whole grove of wild olive trees.
What I object strongly in GM is the use of it to make sterile plants so the people have to buy the seed from companies instead of putting seed aside for the next crop.
I object strongly. It is interfering with the natural order and is a time bomb that could destroy food production given some human induced (WWIII) or natural disaster conditions and maybe send us to extinction as a human race and not only our societies.
And this is a political thread, imo, not a scientific one.
Hate to say this but these reports leave me cold, frozen, distraught.
We have climate ready rice, cooler clime rice, warmer clime rice, much higher yielding rice, easier to plant rice (just chuck the seeds out a helicopter). We have a no cure no pay contract. Guess what nobody will go with it. Plus its certified organic, uses nano molecular stimulation of existing but dormant gene expressions. Can even mix seeds to multiply various resistance thus if floods occur only a fraction of the crop suffers.
Nope these reports, list of concerned agencies just make me tear my hair out.
tj: Surely you jest. “Most famine” is not caused by wars (except perhaps in 20th C Europe)’ but by lack of a transportation infrastructure. As for “natural societies” knowing all about what makes for healthy human beans, I guess that accounts for those same societies’ incredible life expectancies? Close, but no CGIAR. L
…will significantly reduce emissions of greenhouse gases from rice production through the adoption of improved irrigation methods and by avoiding deforestation. More than 1.2 million hectares of forest, wetlands, and other natural ecosystems will be saved by 2035 because rice production will not need to expand into new areas…
Even if this program achieves it’s goals, there is no reduction here; at best, a preservation of the status quo. Typical political babble, like government spending “cuts” that only reduce future increases.
In any case, dare one point out a non-PC truth? Increasing the food supply in poor nations leads directly to increases in population. Both animals and humans tend to reproduce to the limit that the food-supply can support, with the marginalized members of the community always on the edge of starvation.
Looks like a PR piece masquerading as science to me…
We already have a method to raise rice yields by 2 to 4 times, there is no ‘barrier’.
The system of rice intensification.
http://sri.ciifad.cornell.edu/
old site is at:
http://ciifad.cornell.edu/sri/
works fine. Just doesn’t need a huge bundle of funding for new toys and playing with rice genetics…
L says, November 11, 2010 at 12:15 am:
“tj: Surely you jest. “Most famine” is not caused by wars (except perhaps in 20th C Europe)’ but by lack of a transportation infrastructure.”
Do you mean that local tribal warlords are not a big factor in not being able to set up said transportation infrastructure in the first place?
When I read this puff-piece, my BS detector almost deafened me. Honest agrarian scientists have been toiling in the field of increasing crop yeilds, disease-resistant strains etc for just about everything edible almost since modern scientific agriculture emerged and research institutions around the world in this field are legion. Most quietly get on with the job but have to battle idiot politicians who want to divert already scarce research funding into dealing with the non-problems of AGW.