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.