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.
If the sarcasm is directed at the frivolous press release AGW nonsense, then that’s fine.
But if the sarcasm is directed at the hard working agricultural scientists, who are hard at work outside of the Bayer Crop Science/Monsanto/All others cartel, then it is misplaced.
This piece did not make the difference clear, and therefore did nothing to support the role of real, honest scientific effort for the advancement of mankind.
The headline commentary is not up to scratch.
Sounds like the Greatest Thing since SLICED BREAD!
Sounds like an application for Carbon Tax funds offset from Europe, ie GMO research funded by Carbon Cap and Tax funds from the EU. As the EU is against GMO I wish them well in their futile efforts.
Alexander k, well said. There are those that do and those that talk. Some great work bring done on plant diversity and saving valuable species. Monoculture leads to insane risks.
It is said that 95% of the American corn crop is inedible. It has to be factory chemically processed to make it edible but fails to make it food. Thats why most obese people in the USA are starving.
John Game says:
November 10, 2010 at 4:28 pm
This is a very fine initiative. Let’s not knock it. Its a win-win situation, more food, less habitat loss. It too bad that people at Greenpeace and similar organizations have been so hostile to new varieties such as “golden rice” which would have stopped (and still may stop) thousands of children in third-world countries from going blind from Vitamin A deficiency.
———-wrong!-
the years effort and money for Bolaugs golden rice was wasted, theyd have done better to supply non gm crops that grow there, or vitamin pills! the GM corn that the italians were touting is about as useless too..
the green revolution ? hmm? groewing 3 monocrops a year, now means the Brown leaf hopper doesnt get a slow time and its having a lot of fun in the fields now.
the Green rev rice breeds were pushed hard, they destroyed the Old varieties, now they need them..
and CGIAR are a GM support crew in disguise.
William Engdahl has researched terminator genes the USDA and interesting political figures links to both. his page
or Global research -search- terminator genes- Engdahl. Delta Pine and Land. truly sucks!!
So when will the Sierra Club come out and try to take over these wetlands and turn them back into natural forrests?
When I see progress, I always see doo gooders fight it.
I like Alexandeer K’s post. Yes the city folk will send out their MBA’s and environmentalists and teach farmers and seed companies how to improve.
Keep these people out of the way of agriculture.
Mike M says:
November 10, 2010 at 3:50 pm
Rice production is responsible for half the annual anthropogenic methane emissions.
@ur momisugly L
You need to do your research. Start by reading Dr. Price’s book, written in the 1930s. You will be very surprised to find out how long and well many of the “uncivilized” lived. (He wasn’t political, he was a dedicated scientist.)
Making technological and industrial progress is a noble goal, but it must be positive advancement not technological change that may do far more harm than good.
Not to say that there was never warring among different peoples, but modern day “tribal’ warfare is most often stirred up from afar.
This appears to be the dreaded GM having an effect of cutting CO2 emissions (& on the side keeping millions of people alive). The “Green” movement will be split 2 ways on this (4 ways if the keeping people alive stuff is included).
From: Grey Lensman on November 11, 2010 at 6:54 am:
“Grain of truth” lost in a bucket of “healthy eating advocate” hogwash. From Wikipedia:
That’s where the chemical processing comes from. Also, look at the numbers:
That’s 12.0 billion bushels total, of which only 2.72% is directly intended for human consumption. With a further breakdown of “Starch, Corn Oil, Sweeteners” and identifying what gets used in human food, you’ll likely end up with a total at around 5% human consumption, thus 95% was never human food to begin with.
So “traditional” corn needs chemical processing to release nutrients, even then it’s not a “complete” staple food and needs to be eaten with a mix of other foods. If your body was craving for certain nutrients and you kept eating more corn and corn products trying to get them, yeah you’d get obese and still be malnourished (“starving”). Nearly all of the corn grown in the US isn’t for humans anyway thus has no need to edible with or without the chemical processing (and cooking, which wasn’t mentioned).
Grain of truth, lost in the propaganda.
As I understand it, the rate of decomposition of methane increases as its partial pressure increases. The higher the ppm, the higher its partial pressure, the faster it decomposes. Natural limiting process.
A combination of corn and beans provides all of the amino acids.
American Indians, before Europeans arived, consumed a combination of beans and corn (beans were planted so that the beans used the cornstalks as a trellis). American Indians were remarkably healthy, strong and tall, compared with the puny, ill-nourished and disease-ridden Europeans that first arrived.
anna v says:
November 10, 2010 at 11:27 pm
phlogiston says:
November 10, 2010 at 7:26 pm
And this is a political thread, imo, not a scientific one.
Well I guess your right.
Tanks in Tiannenman square and dishonest car salesmen dont call into question our use of the internal combustion engine. They just point to bad human nature.
Likewise the sales tactics of Monsanto and their kind, the notorious sterile seeds etc. This is commercial oppression but does not fundamentally question the existence of transgenic technology.
Someone ought to get non-sterile versions of all their seeds and distribute them widely to break their slave-owner-like hold on 3rd world farmers. Break their control like music downloaders and file-sharers broke the control of the music business.
From LarryOldtimer on November 11, 2010 at 2:39 pm:
Of the “essential” amino acids that human bodies don’t make, soybeans are considered a “complete” source of all of them. Without them, it takes quite a varied diet to get by without animal protein sources, with nuts being a good choice.
As has been mentioned on this site before when diet was discussed, and despite the Wikipedia chunk I pasted above, corn wasn’t the principle staple food of those healthy Native Americans. They relied heavily on animal food sources. See this piece: Guts and Grease: The Diet of Native Americans. It’s quite revealing, and not for the squeamish. 😉
Neither is Soy a principal asian diet. Its limited use as a fermented condiment is just about ok. But its use as a chemical feedstock pretending to be food is criminal. It blocks mineral adsorption and is loaded with female hormone mimics. The Stupid claim ‘organic soy milk’ is a complete oxymoron. Plus soy is responsible for massive destruction and pollution of tropical rain forests. Unlike palm, it needs loads of chemical fertilser and pesticides. In short it should be banned.
phlogiston said on November 11, 2010 at 3:53 pm:
Except they don’t really exist. These are hybrids made from strains that don’t combine naturally to make offspring that reproduce, they’re not true strains. The seed companies don’t sell horses and donkeys, they sell mules and hinnies. They’re F1 Hybrids. If you can get any reproduction, you’re very likely not going to get the traits to breed true.
This isn’t something to blame Monsanto et al strongly for. Every time they make a particular hybrid, they invest a growing season, having to carefully plant and pollinate the crop then wait and see what yield of hybrid seed they’ll get. And that’s after working for many seasons to figure out how to get a particular hybrid with the desired traits. They make their investments, they deserve to benefit from them.
To get non-sterile seed, you’d have to spend decades doing selective breeding to get a true new strain. Then farmers could save harvested seed for next year. And sellers of the strain might only see some one-time sales to some farmers, after which it may spread throughout a farming community. Thus, they may likely never see any profit. That’s the sort of work done by non-profit foundations and true academics who don’t have to worry about making profits, and home gardeners who spend their lives doing such for the sake of horticulture.
So, you start signing people up (yes you, phlogiston), all of you can pool your efforts into making strains that perform as good as the hybrids, and you can distribute to third-world farmers and anyone else you want as cheaply as you can. Which BTW, follows the “open source” model of software development that gave us Linux, Open Office, GIMP, etc. Heck, if you wanted to avoid commercialization of the strains and those derived from them, check out the GNU public license and similar used for open source software, and some music and other types of artwork and writings, etc. Shouldn’t take much to license a new plant strain in that way.
Did I get this right? Are these people going to Vietnam and teach them how to grow rice?
This is all explained in The Onion.
Kadaka writes a long post that says nothing but implies that cooking is chemical processing, that you need to process corn to get the nutrients, that lol only 5% is grown for human consumption (so the chemical processing is ok). whilst at the same time he ignores the dedicated research by such stalwart independents as Weston Price. Well Global warmers like a lot of words backed up by science. Does not mean a whole lot.
HFCS, made from corn, gets very bad reviews ( the consumers hate it, for good reason) oh dear lets change the name to corn sugar. Does that thinking ring any bells.
rbateman says:November 10, 2010 at 3:42 pm
One has to hope this doesn’t mean that they will do to rice what they did to GMO Corn… turn it into empty calories.
That is the purpose. Corn was never the best all around nutritional crop. It’s efficient at carbohydrate production, being a C4 plant (as is rice). So researchers obviously used the natural efficiency of the plant to increase yield/acre. That is what is important, producing the most of various species to maximize yield/acre of each individual organism. If you need protein, eat soya or meat or turnip/beet tops or wild curly dock from the road ditches. Novel idea there.
tj says: November 10, 2010 at 3:48 pm
This sounds like GMO. Certainly hope not. That assault on nature should be terminated (like the terminator seeds now developed). The GMO Roundup Ready soybean has now produced super weeds that Roundup can not stop.
Do you even know how what was done to produce GMO species? They inserted a gene which produced an enzyme that allowed the production of an amino acid which Roundup inhibits. It doesn’t impede your production of anything. This gene is found in nature in microorganisms which you ingest when breathing dust. When you consume food produced by this method, your stomach degrades genes to amino acids, the one in question you already have, so it doesn’t bother you. If eating genes was a problem, you’d have leaves for ears, or look like a pig.
As for the few superweeds, Roundup kills 99.9% of agricultural “weeds”. Poor farming techniques led to increasing pressure of resistant weeds (in the US mostly kochia, pigweed, and mares tail). Crop rotation eliminates the competition. It’s the ubiquitous profit motive of farmers that causes the problems, growing the same crop/variety year after year (and I own land and farm). Of the .1% of weeds that are resistant, most are broadleaf species for which there are literally dozens of other “bad” chemicals that are highly effective. Rotate crops (or even chemicals) and kill the tolerant species. Roundup is just the cheapest. When or where it doesn’t work, it eventually won’t be used. Your problem solved.
Steven Hoffer says: November 10, 2010 at 5:11 pm
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.
Excellent suggestion.
And to others, yes rice can be killed by flooding. Best management practices require a constant flood of ~3″ (~7.5 cm) following emergence. In advanced nations, rice is seeded into the ground (or aerially spread), flooded, then drained until the plant reaches that height, then control flooded again until harvest. In nations that grow the rice in nursery beds, then transplant them in the field, the plant can be submerged in anoxic water and die when the plant is short in early spring when rains come. What they need to do is spend the money on laser guided land levelers and ditching machines, and also tractors. And developing a protein-producing plant that grows in wet conditions for additional human nutritional needs and crop rotation. You see tj, there are even plants resistant to flooding. Imagine that.
phlogiston said on November 11, 2010 at 3:53 pm:
Someone ought to get non-sterile versions of all their seeds and distribute them widely to break their slave-owner-like hold on 3rd world farmers.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
November 11, 2010 at 9:09 pm
Except they don’t really exist.
Not true in any fashion, for any plant. The National Seed Depository in Fort Collins, CO. has about every specie known to exist. And there are sites on the web where you can get seeds of the major crop species to survive the coming hard times. Non sterile corn yields about 50 bu/acre, whereas the mules produce 250 bu/ac on my farm in Neb. And smut is a problem in the native species.
Grey Lensman says: November 11, 2010 at 8:21 pm
Neither is Soy a principal asian diet. Unlike palm, it needs loads of chemical fertilser and pesticides. In short it should be banned.
Gimme a break. Have you ever heard of tofu? Soy needs phosphorus and potassium, but not nitrogen. Sugar needs to be banned.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
November 11, 2010 at 9:09 pm
I’m a bit busy right now to take up world-saving as a hobby. Plus I left behind plant genetics at my undergraduate days. But its interesting that the GM strains are F1 hybrids – I guess the sterility comes from polyploidy – multiplied chromatin copies? BTW all this sounds more like conventional breeding techniques than supposedly scary transgenic technology. (BTW I am with you 100% in being opposed to left-wing political Monsanto-bashing – as I indicated in my first post.) In mice they can use recombinant techniques to edit in alleles and fix them quite quickly in a knock-out or knock-in strain. Perhaps the high levels of ploidy in plants make this difficult?
I guess as you say it would just take several generations of sorting to fix an allele in a breeding population. A simple example would be roundup (herbicide) resistance – any progeny lacking the resistance gene would simply die.
*sigh*
From Grey Lensman on November 12, 2010 at 4:51 am:
Nope. The cooking wasn’t mentioned, but it’s normally done before consuming so I added it in. Some may consider that “chemical processing” as it likely breaks down some starches into more-consumable carbohydrates, as with potatoes. As it is, very little corn is produced like the freely-available Sweet Corn, with wet plump grains that can be eaten raw. Nearly all of it is in dried form suitable for long-term storage and easy transport, which would be very hard for humans to consume without cooking.
To get the niacin from “traditional” corn, yup. Since enriched flour is the norm in the “Western” world, with niacin being one of the added nutrients, niacin deficiency isn’t much of an issue with a varied diet. Feel free to eat farm-fresh sweet corn without chemical processing. Also, as with the mention of the developed high-lysine varieties, there may be strains out there right now which do not require the processing, which is why I refer to “traditional” corn using quote marks.
Such chemical processing was okay with the Native Americans. The 5% was a rough total, when not concerned about the niacin and making starch, corn oil, and sweeteners, the chemical processing isn’t needed.
Which was clearly indicated when I linked right to the Weston Price site for the “Guts and Grease” article. Which specifically mentions the use of “nixtamalizacion,” the dreaded “chemical processing” you’re griping about!
What happened? Were you irked that I didn’t reply to your post against soy last night? Or that I mentioned soy at all in a manner that sounded positive?
For the record, I’m no great fan of soy for human consumption either. Tofurkey should be labeled a federal offense against our traditional US national holidays. I think at least half the population would be upset if it was openly and frequently stated that the cardiovascular benefits of eating large amounts of soy products come from the “feminizing” estrogen-related substances, just as estrogen provides women with such protection before menopause. We have freely-available lactose-free dairy products, thus no need for “soy milk” due to lactose intolerance, and by the time they get done processing soybean juice until it’s “just as good as milk” they should be required to properly label it as a synthetic milk substitute.
My mention of soy having all the essential amino acids came from here, one of the few “rational” sites I could find while searching for “vegetarian protein deficiency.” Yes, I have read “Soy Alert!” on the Weston A. Price Foundation site. It’s a good summarization, with references, of many things I have come across that indicate soy and soy products are not good for human consumption. I was all set to include that link in my reply to your soy post, which I decided to put off to this morning…
The best info I have seen on rice–doubled yields in a single year, and improved results in subsequent generations–was Sonic Bloom in Indonesia. I just checked the website http://www.originalsonicbloom.com and the rice articles are gone. The site changes all the time as more farmers get the crop of their lives. Plenty of fun data exists on the site now, and you can order your very own supply.
I have a two foot tall avocado tree in my house–I couldn’t get them to sprout in Denver without Sonic Bloom.
How odd that these folks want to increase rice production while reducing “emissions of greenhouse gases.” Didn’t anyone tell them that CO2, the current GHG villain, is plant food? Talk about working at cross-purposes!
Oh right: CO2 is believed to ’cause’ global warming. Now we wouldn’t want any of that, would we? Let’s see: a warmer climate, with more CO2, and what do you get? More crops, more rice production!
Sometimes the ability of True Believers to ignore simple logic is beyond understanding.
/Mr Lynn