Over 50 percent of the food calories eaten per day across the world comes from grains. In impoverished nations, that percentage is 60 per cent. In the poorest, it tops 80 per cent.
The three most important grains are corn, wheat and rice. All are critical to global food security, but all are not equal. Corn and wheat both serve as food for people and feed for animals.
Rice, however, is – and has been for millennia – the world’s most widespread, most critical food grain.
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“More than 3.5 billion people get 20 percent or more of their calories from the fluffy grains,” reported Science News in September 2021, and those numbers are “increasing in Asia, Latin America and especially Africa.”
As human pressure on rice ratchets up, humans are ratcheting up assorted problems growing it, The New York Times reported May 20. Rapid climate change, the newspaper noted, is creating never-before-seen problems that will require never-before-seen solutions.
“Sometimes there’s not enough rain when the seedlings need water, or too much when the plants need to keep their heads above water,” the story read. “As the sea intrudes, salt ruins the crop. As nights warm, yields go down.”
A study in China “found that extreme rainfall reduced rice yields over the past 20 years. India limited rice exports… [to ensure] enough to feed its own people. In Pakistan, heat and floods destroyed harvests, while in California… drought led many farmers to fallow their fields.”
The May Rice Outlook, the most recent U.S. Department of Agriculture report examining both the U.S. and world rice markets, reversed dire forecasts of last winter. It now foresees a spike in U.S. and global rice production this year, “mostly due to expanded plantings” fueled by earlier, higher price forecasts.
Still, U.S. rice imports are projected at a near-record, mostly because last year’s carryover was 31 per cent lower, and U.S. exports are expected to jump 21 per cent. The combined domestic and residual use in the coming year is projected to hit a record.
While that’s good news for rice-loving Americans, the 2023-24 season-average farm-price for long-grain rice paid to American farmers is projected to drop 11 per cent to US$15 per hundredweight.
The unforeseen production increase, says USDA, will boost global rice production two per cent, to a record 520.5 million tons. But that now-rosier 2023 forecast cannot mask a years-long decline in global stocks. World stocks are slated to drop for the third consecutive year, according to the USDA
The biggest cause for the shortfall is extreme weather, noted the Times. But weather isn’t the only problem. The very solutions pushed by Big Ag for 50 years, such as high-yielding hybrid seeds and chemical fertilizers, are now delivering intractable woes.
“Today, that very system… has created new problems… [like] depleted aquifers, driven up fertilizer use, reduced the diversity of rice breeds that are planted, and polluted the air with the smoke of burning rice stubble.”
In short, the rhythm of sunshine and rain that rice depends on has been upended.
Solutions, if found, will take years to implement. Researchers like Argelia Lorence, an Arkansas State University plant biochemist, tells the Times that rice itself holds a genetic key, to “enable rice plants to survive hot nights, one of the most acute hazards of climate change.”
Maybe. Hopefully.
In the meantime, rice is today’s singing canary to warn farmers and governments alike that climate change is real and carries real consequences.
– The Farm and Food File is published weekly throughout the U.S. and Canada. Past columns, supporting documents, and contact information are posted at farmandfoodfile.com.
