Rice experts target fairer deal for poor Asian farmers
Rice experts target fairer deal for poor Asian farmers
Deutsche Press-Agentur, Beijing
Rice experts and officials on Monday called for joint efforts among Asian rice-producing nations to ensure poor farmers benefit from increased output and technological advances.
"Rice is life to an estimated 2.6 billion people around the world," said Angeline Kamba of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).
Most of those who rely on rice are poor and live in Asia, which produces 92 per cent of the world's rice, Kamba told delegates at the start of the first IRRI-sponsored International Rice Congress in Beijing.
"The (Asian) region's poor typically depend on rice for at least two-thirds of their calories and some 60 per cent of their protein," she said.
Most rice farmers were "caught in cycle of endless poverty", Peter Kenmoore of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in his address to the congress.
Governments in major rice exporting nations had promoted exports, "often at the expense of the producers", Kenmoore said.
"While the goal of stable prices for urban consumers remains, new policy thinking reflects liberalized global trade and domestic adjustments that reduce subsidies."
Chinese President Jiang Zemin urged developing nations to share the results of agricultural science, such as the mapping of the rice gnome, to help combat rural poverty.
"The problem of global food security still remains unresolved," Jiang said in his speech at the opening of the congress.
International rice scientists plan a series of workshops and seminars during the IRRI congress in Beijing this week.
A research team from Britain's De Montfort University will promote the use of genetically engineered rice strains and suggest ways to combat a consumer boycott of genetically altered farm produce in some Western nations.
"Gene manipulation strategies must be used to facilitate the creation of the new (rice) strains ... that will satisfy the need for efficient, sustainable production," the team said in an advance abstract of a paper to be presented on Thursday.
China is committed to "full use" of genetic technology in rice production, Xu Kuangdi, president of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said on Monday.