The Aura of Rice – a snapshot of the rice industry in the Philippines

We arrived into the Philippines to a hot steamy evening and a two hour drive to IRRI – the International Rice Research Institute located at Los Panyos . Established in 1960 by the Rockefeller Foundation and Henry Ford it is the place for rice research in the world and has the world rice gene bank which holds more than 100,000 native and modified rice varieties from all over the world.

IRRI has three main functions: Scientific and genomic reproduction; plant breeding and production and has 208ha of land upon which it grows 60-80ha of production rice (double cropped) with the remainder of land used for research, campus etc.

As 70 percent of the world relies on rice for food and or employment, the rice industry is certainly far more important that I ever thought and IRRI is leading a ‘Green Revolution’ to enable rice producers to escape poverty but still produce good quality, nutritious rice for consumption and at an affordable price. This is an enormous challenge – to economically and sustainably increase rice production using less water – the current amount of water required to grow one kilo of rice is 3000L.

One of the current research projects is to reduce the average time of rice cooking by four minutes. The consequences of achieving this is millions of energy savings per year, based on the number of people who eat rice three meals a day.

The rice industry in the Philippines is dominated by the Low Land Irrigated system of farming - an intensive method of rice production that is constantly under pressure for land competition by urban industrial development.

One of the greatest challenges for the Philippines is the increasing population and its status as the poorest nation with the biggest discrepancy between wealth in Asia. The agricultural wage is regulated at 234 piso per day - $2, this effects more than 30 percent of the population with the impact on pay parity between those who work at call centres, school teachers etc who can earn up to 20,000 piso per month.

Approximately 70 percent of Philippino’s are catholic and the church has a huge impact on the way this country is now and where it will be in the future. Filipino families tend to be large and there is some concern that the population may get out of control, however with the suggestion that the Philippine’s economic strategy is exporting labor, this potential issue may be all part of the grand plan.