2. Regional situations, trends and projections

2.1 Riceland areas and cropping systems

2.1.1 Rice area and water regime

Within their seven broadly-defined (FAO) agro-ecozones, rice systems can be further - and usefully - characterized and quantified (IRRI 1997) in terms of their rice-phase water regimes: Irrigated, Rainfed Lowland, Floodprone/Swampland, and Rainfed Upland. The areal extent of each of these major categories of regime within each of the seven AEZs is depicted in matrix-pictorial format in Figure 2 of IRRI (1997, based on 1991 data); additionally, IRRI (1997) tabulates those areas of water regimes within individual countries.

Crucially - for the marginal production zones and their inhabitants and for the prospective interventions to assist them - the extensive South-Asian and South-East-Asian rainfed marginal regimes are analyzed and delineated in terms of sub-categories, e.g. "drought-and-submergence-prone", and "water-depth class", for which the constraints, vulnerability, and candidate interventions can be specified.

Table 5 (adapted from IRRI 1997) quantifies for all Asia, and for East Asia (both with and without China), and for South Asia (both with and without India), the harvest areas for each of the major categories of water regime - with double-cropped area counted twice, and all entries rounded to the nearest 1 Mha. Additionally, there are maps (Huke and Huke 1982, with electronic versions by Huke 1996) that delineate these major categories on a whole-Asia scale. Moreover, within the last decade - and facilitated by within-country geographic-information systems and personnel - detailed analyses and mappings at district and provincial level have been accomplished for the sub-categories of water regime. They are already guiding technological livelihoods-oriented interventions (e.g. IRRI-IFAD 2000).

Table 5: Harvested area (million hectare, at 1991) for rice systems of various rice-phase water regimes

[Source: Adapted from IRRI 1997; FAO (2000e) suggests a 1997 Asian-total rice-harvest area of 135 Mha.]

For all water-regime categories in aggregate, Table 5 quantifies the dominance, in rice-area extent, of China in East Asia (which here includes South-East Asia), and of India in South Asia. Correspondingly, these two countries together produced at 1996/99 (FAO 2000b) about 60 percent of all Asian rice. At this continental scale, Table 5 indicates that Asia's harvested rice area totals about 133 Mha. Of this total area, the irrigated sector constitutes about 56 percent: it generates more than 75 percent of total rice production.

Nonetheless, high priority is now accorded (IFAD 2001, Dixon et al 2001, ADB 2000a, 2001b) to the rainfed lowland and to some deepwater areas by governments and civil societies in many of those countries in which the rainfed areas comprise an appreciable proportion of the total rice area. This priority is accorded in expectation of substantial investment returns in terms of enhanced livelihoods, production, national wealth, and sustainable resource management, and of lessened poverty per unit investment. Among major rice-producing countries, rainfed lowland and deepwater rice is proportionately extensive in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Laos, DPRKorea, Myanmar, Nepal, the Philippines, and Viet Nam.

2.1.2 Rice-based cropping systems

There are very many rice-based farming systems; within them, the various types of rice-based cropping systems (occupying the same field in the same farming year) comprise:

sequences: used in both irrigated and in non-irrigated systems: may include one, two, or occasionally three rice crops per farming year; after one or two rice crops, there may be grown one or more non-rice crops;

• inter-croppings: line-sown, used in all water-management regimes, but notably in rainfed-upland and in floodprone systems in both rice and non-rice phases, and often in the post-rice phase in irrigated and rainfed-lowland systems;

• mixed croppings: randomly-sown, used particularly in rainfed-lowland and rainfed-upland systems, and for both rice and post-rice phases;

• relay croppings: line- or randomly-sown, used in all water-management regimes, either/both at commencement and/or cessation of the monsoon; useful during receding-water phase in floodprone systems.

There are several rice-based sequences, variously incorporating one, two, or occasionally three rice crops per farming year. Correspondingly, after the initial rice, and in the same field in the same farming year, there may be grown one or more non-rice crops. In almost all rice-based sequences, the timing for the initial post-dry-season rice crop is constrained, even in irrigated ricelands, within the monsoonal rainfall period; or in deepwater systems, constrained to the months immediately preceding or following the monsoonal period. After that initial rice, and depending on water availability and farm-family constraints and opportunities, the rice-system farmers have many options for their second crop, and sometimes for a third crop, within the farming year. Occasionally, there are options also for multi-year rotations - perhaps including long-duration crops such as sugarcane. Thus, prevalent among the several sequences are:

For farms lacking supplemental water, the options are usually restricted to the single-rice (rice-fallow-fallow) system, and to one or other of the two-phase sequences: e.g. rice followed by or relay-succeeded by a non-rice crop - or by an intercrop pairing - with a succeeding dry-season fallow. The three-crop or the multi-year sequences are more likely to be adopted by the irrigated or by the favourably-rainfed lowland farms. Disasters: Early warning, prevention, preparedness, and management.

A noted and successful crop-sequence adjustment within the last decade - and within the low-lying and hitherto impoverished deepwater areas of western Bangladesh and eastern India - has been the adoption of sequences that allow the deployment of appropriately-selected "Boro" rice cultivars and crop-management procedures (including "ratoon" procedures) to avail of the slowly-receding post-monsoon water. This recession occurs during the cooler cloudless-sky months when air temperature and crop respiration and pest pressures are low and solar irradiance and photosynthesis are high, such that yields also are high.

Additionally, in these lands, persistent shallow groundwater can be accessed for late-season supplementary watering using intermediate-technology low-lift water pumps - diesel-powered or treadle-operated. For pre- (rather than post-) monsoon operations, in flash-flood-prone resource-poor areas, a successful risk-avoidance strategy involves the pre-monsoon sowing of a combination, either mixed or inter-cropped, of two locally-suitable rice cultivars - one early-maturing, one late-maturing (IRRI-IFAD 2000). In other situations of less-intensive production, the simultaneous mixed or inter-cropped sowing of cultivar pairs differing by about 15 days in their growth durations can provide some risk avoidance and also some prolongation of the peak-load harvest and post-harvest operations.

From the many options for the crop immediately following the initial rice, wheat is almost invariably the preferred choice in ecozones and in price-support regimes that favour such rice-wheat sequencing - notably Central China and the Indo-Gangetic Plains. For areas not suited to rice-wheat, FAO (1997a: Bhuiyan) suggests that the farmers' next-preferred option, water permitting, is to grow a second rice crop. This preference reflects the farmers' competence to grow rice with comparatively low risk, their ability to store it within the household, the assured market with prices less volatile than for alternative crops, and relatively low production costs. More recently, FAO (2000c) cautions that - partly on considerations of price and profitability - a large proportion of newly-irrigated land is devoted to non-rice crops.

Nonetheless, rice-wheat cropping and rice-rice cropping, with or without a succeeding crop in the same farming year, are in many ecozones repetitively practised in the same fields year-after-year. They are essentially more permanent than other rice-based sequences. Rice-wheat sequences indeed have a long history: there are written records for rice-wheat cropping in China about 1.4 millennia ago: Fei (1987) and Guo (1989). Conversely, rice-rice sequences are essentially a modern outcome of the availability of irrigation and short-duration cultivars.

2.1.3 Cropping systems: Locations and areal extents

Because of its relative permanence, it is possible to make analyses and to generate statistics for rice-wheat as a system. Through computerized-mapping analyses, it was reliably estimated (Woodhead, Huke, and Huke, 1994) that at 1989/90 the total area of rice-wheat repetitive cropping was about 21 Mha: comprising 0.5 Mha in Bangladesh, 9.1 Mha in China, 9.5 Mha in India, 0.4 Mha in Nepal, and 1.4 Mha in Pakistan. That total may at Year 2002 have increased to 25 Mha: comparable to the estimate (FAO 2000c) that rice-rice and rice-rice-rice sequences might in aggregate at 1999 have occupied 28 Mha of riceland. The cultivated areas of the corresponding "generic" farming systems of Dixon et al (2001) are 62 Mha for rice-wheat systems (South Asia only, East Asia not specified) and 93 Mha for rice-rice systems (East Asia and South Asia combined).

For rice-wheat cropping in Bangladesh, China, India, Nepal and Pakistan, national and regional atlases - based on district-level computer-mapping analyses - have for each country been published for the areas and locations of the rice-wheat systems and for the time-trends in their per-person contributions of grains and of calories for food security and for human nutrition (Huke, Huke, Woodhead, and Jikun Huang, 1993; Huke, Huke, and Woodhead, 1993a and 1993b; Woodhead, Huke, and Huke, 1993; Woodhead, Huke, Huke, and Balababa 1994).

However, in those rice-growing areas that are not suited to rice-wheat nor to rice-rice sequences, no single (non-wheat, non-rice) post-rice crop exercises a dominance comparable to that of wheat and the second rice in their respective zones. Nor can the locations nor the areal extents of such sequences be specified so readily as for the rice-wheat and rice-rice sequences. Nonetheless, useful indicators for the locations for several widely-adopted sequences have been compiled for China and for India, which together contribute almost 60 percent of the Asian rice-growing area, and for some few other rice-growing countries.

For China, Wang and Guo (1994) and FAO (2000c, Zhu, using 1988 data) describe and quantify the north-south climate-determined zoning of various prevalent cropping sequences. Expectedly, the regions of double- and triple-cropping of rice are located in the more-southerly provinces, including the central-eastern provinces. Adapting from Wang and Guo (1994) and from Huke et al (1993), the approximate land (as distinct from harvest) areas of rice-based sequences at 1990 are estimated as: rice-fallow 3.8 Mha, rice-wheat 9.8 Mha (including 0.9 Mha of rice-rice-wheat), rice-oilseed 4.5 Mha (including 2.9 Mha of rice-rice-oilseed), rice-rice-green manure 3.9 Mha, and rice-other 0.6 Mha.

For India, a review by the Cropping Systems Directorate (1997) lists for both irrigated and rainfed systems the thirty most-common crop sequences, whether with or without rice, in each of twenty agro-ecological regions. Among those thirty sequences, seventeen include rice, and of those seventeen, six have sufficient areal extent that they can be por-trayed on a national-scale map. The six sequences are rice-rice, rice-wheat, rice-pulse, rice-oilseed, rice-groundnut, and rice-sorghum. In terms of the numbers of administrative districts for which a particular sequence is among the district's four most popular sequences, the three first-ranked sequences (all India) are rice-wheat, rice-rice, and rice-oilseed.

For rice-rice cropping in India - predominantly in southern and north-eastern states - the area is currently (Siddiq 2000, and in FAO 2000c) about 3.4 Mha (7 percent of the total rice area), having been somewhat higher during 1960-80. In irrigated rice-rice areas in southern India, the second rice may be followed by a pulse, an oilseed, a sweet-potato, or a third-rice crop. Rice-maize and rice-oilseed, irrigated or rainfed, are featured in north-eastern Indian states (V. Pal Singh, personal communication, 2000).

Rice-fallow-jute is practised in Bangladesh, and rice-wheat-maize and rice-potato-maize in Nepal. In Sri-Lankan rice-based sequences - stratified approxi-mately in relation to land elevation and irrigation/drainage patterns, and with some rice-rice cropping in southern districts - the dominant post-rice crops are chilli, onion, and groundnut (FAO 2001g).

Among South-East Asian countries, rice-rice cropping, and occasionally rice-rice-rice cropping, is widely practised in Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Viet Nam. The dominant post-rice crops are maize, garlic, and tobacco in the Philippines, and soybean, mungbean, and peanut in Thailand. In Viet Nam, rice-rice is followed by potato, vegetable, or maize in the Red River system, and by peanut, groundnut, or soybean in the Mekong system (FAO 2001g).

[FAO (2001g: Duwayri) has a specific programme entity "Alternative crops and cultivars for new opportunities" that seeks to make available to farmers the cultivars and knowledge wherewith to pursue niche-specific options in high-value lesser-used crops to produce food (including herbs, spices, and colorants), feed, fibre, fuel, and pharmacia. This programme entity would be supportive of the interventions proposed in this document.]

For Asian developing rice-growing countries as a whole, the total areas (1996/99 averages, FAO 2000b) of wheat, maize, and pulses are 72, 42, and 33 Mha. The estimated area of rice-wheat cropping (21-25 Mha) is thus considerably less than the total area of wheat. It may correspondingly be asserted that the areas of rice-maize and of rice-pulse systems are respectively substantially less than 42 and 33 Mha. IRRI (1997, Appendix-Table 2, 1991 data) lists for seven rice-growing AEZs, and by country within those AEZs, the areas occupied by rice, by wheat, by maize, and by other grains. It lists also - for rice - the areal extent of the four categories of rice-phase water regime.

2.1.4 Fish and livestock components

Within the rice-based farming systems, there is a small but locally valuable contribution of protein, vitamins, and income from quickly-maturing fish. Such fish (finfish, but also crabs and shrimps in coastal China - Dixon et al 2001) are usually raised during the rice phase of the farming year, either in ponds or in the ricefields, with fish-refuge areas excavated within the rice field to permit fish survival during water-shortage periods and to facilitate the fish harvest. Alternatively, in some enterprises for which the fish production is a dominant source of the annual farm income, sequences such as rice-fish-rice-fish are practised.

Livestock - and particularly dairy cattle, small ruminants, and poultry, and their products - are assuming dietary and economic and environmental importance - the "livestock revolution" - in several rice-growing ecozones and countries. Significantly, at 1995/97, livestock products constituted about 40 percent of the gross global value of all agricultural production; and the ratio of developing/whole-world value for livestock products shall increase during 1996-2015 from 51 to 63 percent for meat products and from 36 to 54 percent for milk products. Poultry's share of global meat trade increased from 13 to 28 percent during 1965-1995.

Thus in China, the value of livestock-products GDP as a proportion of all-agriculture GDP increased from 15 percent in 1978 to 30 percent in 1996. For India, corresponding proportions were 17 percent in 1981 and 27 percent in 1999. Moreover, analyses for all-India (Singh, Kumar, and Woodhead 2002) indicate that during recent years the growth rate in total factor productivity for livestock - at 1.8 %/ann - has exceeded that for crops (1.0 %/ann).

At the household level: for rice-wheat and rice-wheat-mustard farming in the unfavourable areas of Eastern Uttar Pradesh (India), livestock contributes 20 to 30 percent of household income, with a further 50 percent (IRRI 2001a) from non-farm activities. Throughout the rice-based systems, ruminants, particularly, can for smallholder households constitute sources of savings, income, meat, milk, hides, fibre, horn, manure and draught power (Dixon et al 2001, FAO 1999c). The rice systems may house about 200 million bovine livestock, and somewhat fewer smaller ruminants.

Growth rates in production per person of total meat and of milk, though each imprecisely determined, have generally been considerably higher than rates of human-population increase. In Asia, though less so in Southern America and Africa, feed and fodder for livestock is increasingly supplied in feedlot and stall systems by coarse grains, oil-meal products, and sometimes sweet sorghum; proportionately less feed derives from pasture land and grazing land. However, in some ecozones, and notably in East Asia, there may be insufficient ruminant-feed supplies to support a major expansion of livestock populations (Dixon et al 2001, FAO 1999c).

Nonetheless, forecast average growth rates (1996-2030) for dairy-cattle populations are 1.4 %/ann in East Asia and 2.2 %/ann in South Asia; and for poultry populations 1.3 %/ann in East Asia and 2.8 %/ann in South Asia. Rates are lower in East than in South Asia as a consequence of the already-high food availability in China. The South and East Asia regions have similar forecasts for growth rates in pig populations (each 0.9 %/ann), and in sheep-plus-goat populations (1.3 %/ann).

The projected increases in livestock numbers have several implications: technological, environmental, and socio-economic (see Section 5) for rice-system farms and their families. Among these implications are that livestock activity shall become a larger component of the farm enterprise, and shall (FAO 1999c, 2000c) increase substantially the per-person requirement for water for food and feed; maize and oilseed crops shall feature more strongly in the cropping systems - perhaps displacing some rice; livestock wastes, including liquids and ammonia and greenhouse gases, shall require environment-friendly management (LEAD 1999); and there may be displacement of families whose existing (extensive) livestock enterprises may be rendered uncompetitive.

[However, as with rice so also with livestock, FAO (2001c) reports a global over-supply of livestock and of meat products and a sharp decline in prices during 1998-2000. Worryingly, there is indication also (FAO 2001c) that annual global assistance to the livestock sectors in developing countries declined from about US$ 330 M in 1996 to about US$160 M in 1997 and 1998 and to only US$80 M in 1999; the livestock share of multilateral assistance to agriculture thus declined from about 3 percent in 1996 to only 1 percent in 1999.

FAO's technical assistance (Medium-Term Plan 2000a) to Livestock and Poverty Alleviation, to Livestock Health and Hygiene, and to its Livestock Environmental and Development Initiative, thus have heightened importance. This lessening of global assistance to livestock is, however, and regrettably, a manifestation (FAO 2001d, Singh 2001b, and others) of a general substantial decline in global assistance - including Development-Bank assistance - to all components of developing-world agriculture during the decade 1987/89 to 1997/99.]

2.1.5 Implications for interventions

The large areal extent (about 25 Mha) of the rice-wheat systems justifies an in-depth review of those systems and the lessons that they can provide. The major expansion of those systems post-1960 resulted from the triple-conjunction of new short-duration photoperiod-insensitive cultivars for both rice and wheat, of sufficient affordable fertilizer to complement the new cultivars' fertilizer responsiveness, and of more-widespread irrigation facilities. Additionally, the synergism among those three features was beneficial (Singh and Paroda, 1994). Corresponding synergisms - which may similarly be beneficial in promoting increased agricultural production and human wellbeing - must be recognized and utilised in other production systems during the initial decades of the new millennium.

240. These several fore-mentioned categories of rice-based production systems expectedly feature in FAO's (2000g, 2001a, and Dixon et al 2001) considerations of the strategies and methods by which interventions in several broadly-defined and extensive regional livelihood-supporting farming systems can be assisted to increase production and income and to lessen poverty. These broadly-defined farming systems have some congruence with the water-regime categories (irrigated, rainfed lowland, rainfed upland) which were introduced earlier. They are therefore here presented (in Box 1 - abstracted from FAO 2000g: Proposed Farming Systems Study for World- Bank Rural-Development Strategy and FAO 2001a: Global Farming Systems Study: Challenges and Priorities to 2030) as an indication of the extent to which appropriately-targeted interventions might within a livelihoods approach - contribute to the lessening of rural poverty.

2.2 Human populations, food security, employment and undernourishment

2.2.1 Nourished and undernourished populations

Projections (FAO 2000d) to Years 2015 and 2030 for (global and regional) human populations and for the numbers of undernourished and of adequately-nourished persons are summarized in Table 6. For both East Asia (including South-East Asia) and for South Asia, the encouraging message from these realistic projections is that the global food-production systems (including their rice-based components) should be able to ensure that in East Asia at Year 2015 there shall be 1.99 B persons adequately nourished (and at 2030, 2.22 B) compared to 1.56 B at 1995/97 - at which time similarly there was a substantial increase compared to the 1.01 B at1979/81. For South Asia, the corresponding totals were/are 0.56 B adequately-nourished persons at 1979/81, 0.97 B at 1995/97, 1.48 B at 2015, and 1.84 B at 2030.

Table 6: Human populations and their state of nourishment (each in billions of persons): 1996-2030

[Source: FAO 2000d.]

However, notwithstanding these encouraging aspects, Table 6 indicates that in East Asia at Year 2015 the number of undernourished persons (144 million) shall still exceed one-half of the 1995/97 total (240 M); for South Asia, correspondingly, 165 million at 2015, compared to 284 M at 1995/97. Only by 2030 shall the numbers of undernourished in each of these regions be appreciably fewer than 100 million. Moreover, this persistence of undernourishment is a manifestation of lack of purchasing power wherewith to buy food, rather than a shortfall in food production. The need to create income-generating opportunities for the poorest rice-system smallholders is thus vital.

Average-annual human-population growth rates corresponding to the totals in Table 6 are for East Asia 0.9 %/ann during 1996-2015 and 0.5 %/ann during 2015-2030; South-Asia figures are 1.5 %/ann and 1.0 %/ann. However, these regional-aggregate figures conceal substantial differences among constituent countries. Thus in South Asia (FAO 2000b), the 1996-2010 projected growth rates of 1.5 %/ann in Bangladesh and of 1.3 %/ann in India contrast with 2.1 %/ann in Nepal and 2.3 %/ann in Pakistan. These differences have consequence for the relative persistence (among countries) of food insecurity and of poverty.

Sources: FAO: Proposed Farming Systems Study for World-Bank Rural-Development Strategy; (Weatherhogg, Dixon and de Alwis, 2001; and Ivory, 2001)

2.2.2 Creating rural employment

Crucially, within the table 6 population totals there is detail of immense significance. In much of the developing world, including East Asia and South Asia, and as a consequence of the age distribution, there is an ongoing and rapid rise, to continue to Year-2020 or thereabouts, in the ratio of prospective workers (and savers) to dependants. This constitutes a "window of opportunity" or "demographic gift" to lessen poverty and undernourishment. But it constitutes an opportunity only if appropriate policies enable the prospective workers to find employment.

Much of the required employment can and should be in rural areas; some of it perhaps directed to activities (on lands with assured tenure, Dixon et al 2001) such as tree planting and the installation of field drains and fish ponds, and much of it to rurally-based value-adding agroprocessing enterprises. Rural-employment opportunities must accommodate the feature that many of the prospective workers shall be computer- and informatics-literate. For either category of prospective employee, and as FAO (2000f) reports, the investment-plus-recurrent cost for a rural workplace is substantially less than for an urban workplace. In most developing economies such rural-employment generation is agriculture-driven - whether on-farm, off-farm, or non-farm. There shall be need for substantial investment (ADB 2001a) - but there are guiding models for such investment programmes.

One such (highly successful) programme is the Township and Village Enterprise (TVE) Programme in China (FAO 1998b Annex 3). Between 1970 and 1996, that programme created employment for about 100 M (million) rural labourers - 20 M of whom in construction activities, and 80 M in industry - often as sub-contractors to urban industries: consumer goods, textiles, construction materials, farm machinery, and food processing. It thereby facilitated, in combination with some rural-urban migration, a substantial decrease in the proportion of rural labourers engaged in agriculture. TVEs, in aggregate, generated at 1996 about three-fourths of the rural gross output value and about four-tenths of national export earnings.

For other Asian countries wishing to develop similar rural-employment-generating programmes, FAO (2000a) has the mandate, expertise, ongoing programmes, and an Investment Centre wherewith to provide technical support and to assist member governments to obtain external funds to help finance the necessary investments, and to help national agencies to identify and to lessen any barriers - such as entry-permit requirements and costs, and lack of relevant education - to rural off-farm employment.

At household scale within the rice-based communities, post-harvest value-adding activities provide on-farm and off-farm opportunities for creation of new employment, and for expansion of existing employment, and correspondingly for income augmentation. It is thus helpful that, as the world's largest industry, the food industry has the capacity to accommodate an enlarged workforce. Employment-creation opportunities for the ricelands derive from the crops and from the livestock phases, and possibly from the fish phase, in mixed rice-based farm systems.

For rice, there are many established and emerging options for food-products manufacture - at household, community/co-operative, and small-industry scale. The options are in part determined by the rice-grain amylose content (AC), and are thereby likely to be country/ecozone-specific. The many options are featured, and their processing described, in FAO (1997b). They include desserts, cakes, crackers, and sauces (using lowest-AC grain); baby foods and breakfast cereals - popped, puffed, or flaked (low-AC); soups, crackling, and fermented cake (intermediate AC); and noodles (high AC).

Additionally, rice may be processed into flours, starches, batters, and thickeners, into pre-cooked or quick-cooking convenience foods, and into syrups, wines, and spirits. Some of these rice products provide the option to incorporate other rice-system products - such as pulses, coconut, or dried fish; if of high quality, such products have export potential. Brown rice, with the option for pre-milling pressurized moisture-conditioning that permits higher recovery of vitamins, minerals, and proteins, is likely to become increasingly marketable as populations become more health-conscious.

FAO (1997c) has reviewed also the value-adding and employment-generating possibilities from the four main rice by-products: broken rice, bran, straw, and hull. Expectedly, broken rice may be used similarly to non-broken milled rice - as in flours, starches, syrups, beers, wines, and spirits; it is used also as a poultry feed.

For rice bran, and despite its high free-fatty-acid content and its proneness to contamination during milling, there are many options for products and processing - including health-enhancing dietary-fibre foods and products that can lower blood cholesterol in humans. Bran may be used also as a feed supplement for sheep and pigs, and in the manufacture of wax and cooking oil.

Rice straw has many potential and proven uses, but for many of them there are more-convenient alternatives, and straw remains under-utilized and often burnt. Within rice communities, some straw is used (sometimes with rice bran) as mushroom bedding, and some is rendered palatable to livestock through treatment with urea or/and appropriate micro-biological inoculants.

Rice hull (or husk) is, like straw, much produced and little used. There is some minor usage as sheep-feed supplement, and as a composting and seed-bed ingredient; and some industrial use in the production of ceramics, fibre-board, and silica. There are proven technologies and prototypes to use rice hull as a fuel - either in direct combustion (briquette), or by gasification (FAO 1991) to produce a fuel for internal combustion engines that generate electricity. This document review other bio-fuel options for rice-system communities, and the possibilities to avail of Agenda-21/Kyoto-Protocol provisions.

Rice-system livestock similarly provide on-farm and off-farm value-adding and employment-creation opportunities - both at community/co-operative and at small-township scale, and particularly for women (FAO 1999c). Poultry, cattle, and pigs perhaps offer most opportunity to smallholder rice farms. For each of them, individual farms may expect to compete effectively in village markets, but groups/co-operatives, with agro-economic marketing support, shall be needed to penetrate urban markets and export markets.

For poultry, and whether for meat or for eggs, native chicken and hybrid duck may provide worthwhile income-generating options. Noting that rice bran may provide much of the supplemental (non-scavenged) feed for rice-system poultry, then slaughter-house blood meal may provide an additional and low-cost and market-acceptable poultry-feed ingredient. Whatever the feed, hybrid duck can expect to be more productive than indigenous duck, and to provide additional protein and income to farm families; there are reliable sources for the required exotic males. Hybrid-duck meat, when processed with suitable spices and non-meat ingredients, can supply low-cost protein to rural communities and to their school-lunch services.

For both chicken and duck, appropriate-technology small-town slaughter-and-dressing systems and blood-meal-manufacturing systems are available - with supportive advice/expertise; as also is advice and training for artificial insemination and for housing, hygiene, and health..

For cattle, rice farms smaller than 0.4 ha may provide insufficient land and feed resources. There are, however, prototype systems of communal housing and management - but with individual livestock ownership - wherewith smallholders can participate in beef or dairy production and income generation. However, such participation generally requires medium-term micro-finance support - both for the individual owner and for the communal enterprise. The construction cost for a 50-animal house is typically $1 500. Helpfully, suitable cross-bred stock are available that can be fattened or milked when fed on diets incorporating appreciable proportions of processed rice-straw and a little rice-bran. For indigenous breeds and smallholdings, FAO (1999c, Figure 15) emphasizes that relatively small quality-feed supplements can impact strongly in enabling livestock to transform from a maintenance-metabolism existence to one of profitable production.

For indigenous and for cross-bred cattle, procedures of hygiene and health, particularly for parasites, are well known, but resources may be needed to ensure their application. Lacking such application, production and income may be constrained, and access to supermarkets and other quality outlets debarred (as also for poultry). For beef-cattle processing, designs are available for small-town abattoirs, and there are various programmes of training for meat inspection and for meat-processing technologies. For smallholder milk producers, technologies are available to delay milk deterioration while awaiting collection and during transport: technologies both of preservation by lactoperoxidase, and of farm-scale packaging-with-pasteurization.

For South-East Asia, and as an alternative to beef-cattle raising, swamp-buffalo enterprises may provide a less-risky income-generating opportunity. Such buffalo are better feed-converters than cattle, can make use of low-quality feeds, and are more resistant to ticks and tick-borne diseases. Moreover, at comparable age, buffalo meat and beef are equally acceptable to most consumers.

[FAO (2000a) through its Agricultural Support Systems Division and its Animal Production and Health Division has expertise and mandate to assist member countries to identify and pursue post-production and agro-industry employment-generating opportunities.]

2.2.3 Effects of 1997-98 economic crises

For both rural and urban poor in South-East and North-East Asia, the 1997-98 economic crises impacted seriously - and may in 2002 continue to impact - on the numbers of poor and on their food insecurity. IFPRI (1998b) and FAO (2001d) report that the return of urban newly-unemployed to their home villages in 1997-98 caused a decrease in agricultural wages and an increase in rural unemployment - particularly of rural women.

The numbers of rural undernourished increased substantially in Indonesia and the Philippines. Cost of food imports into Malaysia doubled - from US$ 4 B/ann to US$ 8 B/ann. FAO (1999a and 2001d, quoting World Bank) reported - for 1998 as compared to 1996-97 - a doubling of poverty in Indonesia and RoKorea (urban in the case of RoKorea), and in Thailand a 13 percent increase. Thus for South-East Asia (alone) the crisis caused (ADB 2000a) an increase of 10 million in the number of poor persons. In standard of living, Thailand experienced a 14 percent decline; and Indonesia suffered a 24 percent decline, such that consumption of milk, eggs, and vitamin-fortified foods decreased, with consequent increases of night blindness in women and of anaemia in children.

Moreover, IFPRI (1998b) and ADB (2001a) posed the question: shall Year-2020 nutrition/poverty projections be distorted if the crisis effects continue? Such continuance was perhaps manifest in 1999 in Indonesia (2000, Statistical Year Book 1999), where the proportion of the population classified as "below poverty line" was determined to be about 23 percent - twice its pre-crisis value, though less than the 1998 peak; proportions are increasingly higher in rural areas as compared to urban areas - the urban areas benefited proportionately more from decreased prices of essential commodities. These impoverished rural areas include many of Indonesia's major rice-producing zones.

Additionally, for Indonesia, RoKorea, and Thailand, FAO (2000b) reported (for 1999) signifi-cant decreases, as compared to 1997, in food-production indices and in livestock-production indices. However, and encouragingly, FAO (2001d) suggests that governments' remedial measures were effective, and the economic recovery has, excepting Indonesia, been faster than expected - though econo-mic growth has still been slower (ADB 2000b) than would have occurred in the absence of the crisis.

Regrettably, and in several developing countries, there shall be severe sets-back to these recoveries, and to rural-poor communities and their children and other vulnerable groups, as a consequence of the terrorism of 11 September 2001.

2.2.4 Forecasts for food requirements

From the projected human-population totals for Years 2015 and 2030, forecasts have been made for the likely production requirements for rice and for other food crops (corresponding growth-rate require-ments were summarized in Table 3). Forecasts (FAO 2000d) for all developing countries (but essentially Asian countries for rice) for food-crops annual pro-ductions required at 2030 (with values at 1995/97) are: rice 765 (540) Mt/ann; wheat 420 (270) Mt/ann; maize 505 (255) Mt/ann; and soybean 155 (65) Mt/ann. These forecasts recognize the considerable diversity (among rice-producing countries) in dietary preferences for rice: indeed, the proportion of calorie requirement that is met by rice ranges from 5 percent in Pakistan to more than 70 percent in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Viet Nam.

For South Asia in aggregate, Paroda and Kumar (2000) estimate that at Year 2030 - with a predicted South-Asia population of 1.92 B, and a continuing dominance of food grains (60 to 70 percent of calories in the national diets) - the combined food-grains require-ment in the household shall be 320 Mt/ann, comp-rising 145 Mt/ann of rice, 112 Mt/ann of wheat, 14 Mt/ann of maize, 23 Mt/ann other coarse grains, and 25 Mt/ann of pulses. Additional requirements (in aggregate about 45 Mt/ann) - for livestock feed, for seeds, for industrial use, and for wastage - raise the total to 365 Mt/ann. Rice and wheat each contribute about 15 Mt/ann to that additional need.

2.2.5 Indications of food supply from rice systems

For India alone, IFPRI (1999b) suggests that there might at Year 2020 be a deficit in all-cereals production of about 50 Mt/ann. However, as suggested in this document's table 3, the more-recent FAO 2000d analysis indicates that for most food crops (including cereals), and globally and for East Asia and South Asia, the annual growth rates in production that shall be required during 1996-2030 are substantially less than those that were achieved during 1967-96. Thus for rice, globally, and here elaborating the Table-3 data, the annual growth rate in production during 1975-95 was 2.3 %/ann: the required rates during 1995-2015 and 2015-2030 are respectively forecast as only 1.2 %/ann and 0.6 %/ann. However, for rice for India, chapter 1.2.3 cautions that yield-growth rate may during 2002-2004 fall below the population-growth rate.

Among specific rice-based cropping sequences, the rice-wheat sequence is one for which detailed district-level analyses have been made of the proportion of preferred calorie requirement that can be satisfied by local production of rice and wheat (Rice-Wheat Atlases for Bangladesh, China, India, Nepal, and Pakistan, by Huke, Woodhead, and co-workers, 1993 and 1994). Thus, using FAO (1990) specifications for calorie requirements, and with adjustments for effects of climate, average weight per person, national dietary preferences, and losses of production to wastage and pests, values were calculated for the annual per person production of rough-rice-plus-unmilled-wheat needed to satisfy the milled-rice-plus-wheat-flour component of the national-average per person nutritional requirement.

The resultant estimates were 300 kg/person.ann for Bangladesh, 200 kg/person.ann for China, India and Nepal, and 150 kg/person.ann for Pakistan. The Rice-Wheat Atlases quantify the general and impressive success of the rice-wheat-system districts in increasing rice and wheat production during 1950-1990 sufficiently not only to meet the nutritional requirements of the substantially-increased local populations but also to generate surpluses for export to other provinces and states and for input to the food-security buffer stocks.

2.3 Economic growth and rural wellbeing

2.3.1 Economic growth: Influences and forecasts

Economic growth in the general economies, including their agricultural economies, and population growth have in the past determined, and shall in the future determine, the aggregate and the sectoral growth in agricultural products and enterprises. Responsible global projections for future trends in areas and yields for crops, for livestock, and for fisheries, and allowing for the projected availability of inputs, shall indicate the extent to which agricultural systems - including rice-based systems and their import/export capabilities - shall succeed in meeting the projected demands for food and for food security.

Precise forecasts for economic growth are a crucially important component in any food-security-projection undertaking. Unfortunately, precision in such forecasts is difficult to achieve - even for industrialized economies and for their near term. For developing Asian countries, FAO (1998b, citing various sources) suggests that a robust forecaster of economic growth is the population's access to education, nutrition, health, and land (and thereby credit) - leading in turn to enhanced wellbeing and higher and more-equitably distributed incomes.

However, the difficulty in attaining precision in developing-country income-growth forecasts may be indicated by IFPRI's (1999b) experience in attempting to predict trends to Year 2020 in the income/person in India: responsible estimates can be as high 6 %/ann or as low as 2 %/ann. The implications are vital: thus, for South Asia in aggregate, IFPRI (1998a) calculates that with 5.5 %/ann economic growth to Year 2020, the number of undernourished children (which was 86 M at 1995/97) shall decrease to 66 M. However, with 4.0 %/ann economic growth, undernourishment and poverty shall not by Year 2020 have decreased from their 1995/97 values, perhaps giving rise to social and political tensions. FAO (2000d) similarly suggests that some South Asian countries may have insufficient income growth to decrease by Year 2030 their numbers of poor persons.

For the near term (1999-2008), annual-average growth rates for total GDP (not income) are forecast by FAO (2000d Figure 2.3, adapting World Bank 1999) to be 6.2 %/ann for East Asia (developing countries) and 5.1 %/ann for South Asia, compared respectively to 8.5 and 5.8 %/ann during 1991-98. Recent estimates (ADB 2002) are that by Year 2003 overall GDP growth rate may in all South-Asian rice-growing countries reach or exceed 5.0 %/ann. Estimates for growth rates in per person GDP (and for the longer term, 1995/97 to 2030, FAO 2000d Table 2.4) are listed in Table 7.

Table 7: Forecasts for per person GDP annual growth rate for East Asia and South Asia: 1995/7-2030

[Source: FAO 2000d.]