Kunming, China - Rice is a major food commodity and staple food for many, and adding fish to flooded rice paddies has been a farming tradition practiced in a number of Asian countries for many centuries—even for more than 1000 years in some Chinese areas.

The rice paddies offer protection and organic food for the fish, while the fish soften the soil and provide nutrients and oxygen for the rice crop. Farmers get two products from the same piece of land, leading to poverty reduction and improved food and nutrition security.

This practice is recognized as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System (GIAHS), and FAO and member countries are studying and promoting new innovations in these traditional practices, taking into account varying socio-economic and environmental conditions.

Such efforts culminated in the Asia-Pacific regional workshop on innovative integrated agro-aquaculture held in Yunnan, China, last month, which brought together 25 senior government officials from Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Philippines and Viet Nam. This is also part of FAO’s partnership with China on the Belt and Road Initiative to support countries on their path towards a more sustainable agriculture.

The group of experts visited the rice-fish farming systems in the terraced rice field in Honghe, a county in the country’s poverty reduction key areas, where fish is integrated in rice paddy to achieve higher yield and better quality of rice topping with fish as an additional commodity, and as a result, the total output value has been tripled.

FAO Reference Center for Fisheries and Aquaculture, the Freshwater Fisheries Research Center in Wuxi of China, has provided technical support and backstopping to Honghe on the rice-fish farming system and set up an experimental station which was inaugurated on the occasion of the visit of FAO and the international experts.

The group agreed to continue collaborating to develop a regional strategy for upscaling the rice-fish farming systems through a regional technical cooperation programme with financial support by multiple development fund under the south-south cooperation scheme at the regional level.

Policy makers from the seven countries also recognized the need to promote inclusive growth to benefit the poor, such as through the development and strengthening of cooperatives and linking farmers to markets, and to reduce women’s work burden through adopting labour-saving technologies and practices. The goal is to achieve equitable and sustainable development for all by means of rice-fish farming.

The workshop was jointly convened by SP2 and RAP, together with the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences. Colleagues from RIs on Blue Growth and RRI, SP3, AGP, FIA and ESP, and FAO China Office provided support.