The Communist Party daily, Granma, said a state agricultural company had partnered with the unnamed firm for three years to cultivate the grain on 3,000 hectares (7,413 acres) in western Pinar del Rio province, hinting the lease and acreage would be extended.

“For the first time, a process of handing over land to a foreign company is being carried out to take charge of its cultivation,” engineer Jorge Feliz Chamizo, who is the deputy director of the Granos de Los Palacios agroindustrial company, was quoted as stating.

Cuba consumes up to 700,000 metric tons of rice annually, most imported from Vietnam.

But the import dependent county’s main staple has been in short supply in recent years due to an economic depression sparked by a lack of convertible currency to import food, fuel, spare parts, raw materials and agricultural inputs.

Local rice production peaked at around 250,000 metric tons of consumable rice in 2018 before the crisis began, and has fallen more than 80 per cent since then, the National Statistics Office has reported.

Granma also reported the venture would be the first to hire labor directly, instead of through a state-run hiring hall.

Many investors complain they are forced to hire labor through the hiring halls in hard currency which then pay their employees in pesos and in general make managing their labor force more difficult.

Foreign investment has declined in recent years due to tougher U.S. sanctions, according to the government, though no statistics are available.

Western diplomats and businesses also report difficulties repatriating profits due to the country’s cash shortage.

Prime Minister Manuel Marrero said in December the government would change the labor practice as part of reforms this year to the foreign investment law.

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The project fit with their role in Manitoba’s agricultural sphere: They risk the wreck, so the farmer doesn’t have to.

Why it matters: Manitoba has four diversification centres, in Melita, Roblin, Carberry and Arborg, that test crops and practices that are new or require more data to optimize their utility on the farm.

If it had worked, Manitoba might have added another staple crop to rotations. Researchers thought the unique weather trends and characteristics of the region had provided success to other unusual crops, so maybe rice could also make the jump.

It didn’t turn out that way.

“It was the end of May,” said Scott Chalmers, WADO’s applied research specialist. “It took two weeks before it even decided to come out of the ground, and that’s way too long. You want to see crops come out of the ground, or at least germinate, within three days.”

The rice experiment is one of many examples in which Manitoba’s diversification centres have pushed the province’s agricultural boundaries.

As well as variety trials for mainstream crops or research on input application, the sites have tested best practices for hemp or potatoes and researched the viability of quinoa. WADO has looked extensively into intercropping combinations and the agronomy for established intercrop combinations like peaola.

Chalmers estimates that, across the four provincial crop diversification centres, about 145 crops have been tested. Some of those, like rice, have been losers, but others, like hemp, passed muster and can now be found in fields across the province.

Diversification

Diversification boils down to the idea that “you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket,” Chalmers said. “This has to do with rainfall, heat and cool conditions and the different environmental risks that we have to buffer ourselves against.”

More crops in the rotation means more biodiversity on the farm and more time between crops that share a disease or pest profile, muting the risk of compounding issues year after year.

It also means more markets, increasing economic resilience and opportunity for growth for the farm and for Canadian agriculture as a whole.

Manitoba has more than 11 million acres of working cropland and 97 per cent of it is covered by just 11 crops. Over half of that is wheat and canola. An additional 25 per cent goes to soybean and tame hay, with the remainder in oats, barley, corn and a few others.

About three per cent, or close to 846,000 acres, is dedicated to specialty crops like sunflowers (Manitoba accounted for the bulk of Canadian production as of the 2021 census), potatoes, flax and hemp.

Hemp

Hemp’s success story has a number of roots. The crop grows well under Manitoba conditions, producing both grain and oil that have become mainstay markets for local hemp growers. It’s been helped by the rise of local processors and end users like Manitoba Harvest.

Consumer interest in plant-based protein also set the stage for hemp’s market potential. High protein content is a major trait of the grain.

The legalization of cannabis and subsequent loosening of hemp regulations was, at one time, another source of excitement for the industry. The changes were expected to open the nutraceutical market, with hemp as a source of CBD, a compound that can be derived from both hemp and cannabis. CBD is said to have many health and wellness attributes.

But the industry ran into logistical challenges with processing and marketing hemp for that use, and hemp for CBD production stalled.

“We’re also looking at the fibre and its multiple uses that boost the value,” Chalmers said. “We’re looking at things like the woody hurd portion, which is used in cement to reinforce it and add insulating R value, as well as the fibre, which can be used in composites for things like making doors for vehicles.”

Today, Hemp Sense in Gilbert Plains is a major processor of hemp fibre in Manitoba. It focuses on livestock bedding, kitty litter and animal feed, and it has also made inroads into the human food market.

Making it work

The work at WADO often focuses on agronomics to ease production of new crops, but there are many non-agronomic factors that affect whether a novel crop will join the winner’s circle.

There is the equipment variable. What kind of machines are needed to grow and harvest the crop, and is there a local mechanic able to fix or maintain that machinery?

Is there a financial institution that understands the crop’s risk and value, and will lend money to grow it?

Is there a grower’s organization to help finance breeding programs and offer agronomic extension or marketing information? Is transportation to a processor or buyer economically viable?

“Hops have been, by far, my favourite endeavour,” Chalmers said. “Randy Tye and his wife, Lynn, started a hop yard south of Boissevain a few years back. They were able to harvest eight acres with a yield of about a thousand pounds per acre, dry.”

The local producers were able to sell all the hops to microbrewers in Manitoba.

“The challenge was that this crop is very thirsty and it’s labour intensive,” Chalmers recalled. “It’s also a magnet for insects like the two-spotted hop aphid, which is native to Manitoba and found in chokecherries. Hops require intensive spraying with a fogger.”

In another example with less positive results, a Dutch company tried to jumpstart Manitoba production of calendula, a perennial plant in the daisy family. The company was attracted to Manitoba due to lower land prices and hoped to produce calendic acid-rich oil from pressing the crop’s seeds. That oil would have been a base ingredient in wood lacquer for furniture finishing.

“We took it to a cold press and tried to get some of the oil out and they almost broke the press,” Chalmers said. “The company gave up, and we really didn’t hear too much about this after that.”

Up and comers

Manitoba now has a number of promising novel crops under review. One is teff, an African grass with an edible seed. The grain shows promise for flat breads, while the stalk can be used as livestock fodder.

Another is lupin, a bean crop native to the Mediterranean and Eurasia that has good protein content and nitrogen fixation. That crop has earned national investment from Canada’s protein supercluster, Protein Industries Canada, elsewhere on the Prairies.

In 2022, $7.3 million was announced for four companies: Calgary-based Lupin Platform; Hensall Co-op; Lumi Foods; and Puris, to develop the crop and improve its processing and market.

At WADO, lupin has been a feature of test plots for several years.

“We’re all part of this value chain where it all starts out with a unique idea and it filters down through the research continuum to the applied research,” Chalmers said. “But most importantly, you have to do extension so you can transfer it to the end users who are adopting it on the field.”

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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.

“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.

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More than 70 days of extreme temperatures and low rainfall have wreaked havoc along the basin of the Yangtze, which supports more than 450 million people as well as a third of the country’s crops.

Though rain was expected at the end of August and in early September, farmers near the depleted Poyang Lake in central China’s Jiangxi province, normally a flood outlet for the Yangtze, worry that the heat has already done too much damage.

The agriculture ministry in an emergency notice Aug. 23 called on farmers to harvest and store rice and act to strengthen grain growth in coming weeks. In areas where the drought has already inflicted heavy damage, farmers are encouraged to switch to late-autumn crops like sweet potatoes, but that is no easy task.

“We can’t switch to other crops because there’s no land,” said Hu Baolin, a 70-year-old farmer in a village on the outskirts of Nanchang, Jiangxi’s provincial capital.

He said his plants, including oil rapeseed and sesame, were far less developed compared to normal years, and his pomelos were just a third of their usual size.

The agriculture ministry said the hot weather posed a “serious threat” to autumn grain production and urged local governments to “do everything possible” to find more water.

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Marcos, who was sworn in as president last week and has appointed himself agriculture minister, said the Philippines — the world’s second-biggest rice importer — was now at a disadvantageous position over its food supply.

“When we look around the world, everyone is preparing for it,” Marcos said during a meeting with senior agriculture officials, referring to the food crisis.

“So we should really pay close attention to what we can do.”

Marcos comes to power at a critical time, with inflation at its highest in more than three years and as the world faces a tightening food supply, resulting from the conflict between major cereals exporters Russia and Ukraine.

A transcript of the meeting provided by the presidential mentioned no specific remedial measures or targets, but Marcos said the government would ensure affordability of food prices.

To ensure long-term food sufficiency and affordability, Marcos reiterated a campaign promise to “reconstruct our value chain”, within his six-year term, to lessen dependence on food imports.

He also sought a review of a 2019 Rice Tariffication Law, which opened the Philippine door wider to imports by removing the annual quota on purchases and limiting the government’s role in rice trade to ensuring supply during emergencies.

— Reporting for Reuters by Enrico Dela Cruz.

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Container-based transportation has been hit by sky-high costs and delays amid booming shipping demand, while container terminals at ports struggle to deal with the flow.

Commodities such as refined sugar, coffee, rice, cotton and cocoa have moved from dry bulk vessels to containers in the past since the large boxes were more practical and offered good quality control. But now shippers are moving back, at least temporarily.

“Around 80 per cent of the trade on refined sugar was done using containers before the pandemic. This has now fallen to around 60 per cent,” said Paulo Roberto de Souza, CEO of Alvean Sugar, the world’s largest sugar trader.

According to Souza, the change is only not bigger because there are not a lot of small vessels available in the market.

Data from shipping agency Williams regarding port movement in Brazil, the world’s largest sugar exporter, shows that volumes of refined sugar transported using containers fell 48 per cent in June and July (latest data available) compared to the previous year.

Bob Cymbala, owner at food trader A+J Global USA, based in Vancouver, said that some clients are turning down offers due to high prices for container freight, looking for shipping alternatives instead.

One of his clients, a rice exporter in India, is looking to use a dry bulk cargo to ship to Western Africa a volume of rice equivalent to 10 full containers.

Coffee exporters are not considering a change away from containers yet, besides the difficulties, mostly due to concerns over quality. They say containers, with proper lining, better preserve coffee characteristics such as smell and taste.

— Reporting for Reuters by Marcelo Teixeira.

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The farmers, killed on Oct. 3 in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, were part of India’s longest-running agricultural protest, opposing laws they fear will reduce guaranteed minimum prices for their crops.

Police arrested Mishra late on Saturday after questioning him for more than 10 hours, said Deputy Inspector General Upendra Agarwal, who is heading the probe. Mishra had not responded to a police summons on Friday.

“We are taking Ashish Mishra in custody. He was not co-operating in the investigation,” Agarwal said.

Mishra’s lawyer and father could not be reached for comment.

Farmers say the car that crashed into the protesters, about 130 km north of the state’s capital Lucknow, was owned by the son of the junior home minister.

Ajay Mishra Teni said at the time his son was not at the site and that a car driven by “our driver” had lost control and hit the farmers after “miscreants” pelted it with stones and attacked it with sticks and swords.

The incident sparked protests that claimed four more lives, including that of a local journalist.

Tens of thousands of farmers have camped for months on major highways to New Delhi to oppose the three laws. They say the legislation will erode a longstanding mechanism that gives farmers a minimum guaranteed price for their rice and wheat.

The government says the laws will help growers get better prices.

The protests have gained momentum in Uttar Pradesh ahead of a state assembly election next year, with a group of influential farmer leaders ratcheting up pressure on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to roll back the laws.

— Reporting for Reuters by Saurabh Sharma; writing by Nidhi Verma.

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In India, the world’s biggest rice exporter, the conventional method of rice cultivation requires farmers to sow seeds in nurseries and then wait for 20 to 30 days before manually transplanting the seedlings into plantation fields that are ankle-deep in water.

With the new seed varieties, developed by the state-run Indian Agricultural Research Institute, farmers only need to irrigate the field once to moisten the soil before sowing the rice.

The conventional cultivation method also uses a lot of water to control weeds as herbicides are costly and often do not distinguish between the rice and the unwanted vegetation.

Government scientists said the new rice varieties contain a gene that would allow farmers to spray a common, inexpensive herbicide without worrying about any side effects.

“Our focus is very high on more nutritious seeds, that can be adopted to new conditions, especially in changing climates,” Modi said.

Water conservation is likely to be the main attraction of the new rice varieties in India, where farmers rely heavily on monsoon rains.

The conventional method uses 3,000 to 5,000 litres of water to produce one kilogram of rice. The new varieties could cut water use by at least 50-60 per cent, farmers and government officials say.

“For farmers like us, the main concern was the management of weeds, and the new varieties take care of that concern,” said Ravindra Kajal, who grows rice on his nine-acre plot in the northern state of Haryana.

India is also the world’s biggest rice producer after China.

— Mayank Bhardwaj reports for Reuters from New Delhi.

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The last futures will trade in June 2022 when all outstanding rice contracts will have expired, ending trade that began in 1730, after samurai petitioned the Tokugawa shogunate to authorize trade in rice futures at the Dojima Exchange, as it was called then.

The move came after the Japanese Agriculture Ministry rejected an application to re-license rice futures because of low volumes, said the head of the exchange.

“We haven’t regarded rice futures as a pillar of our revenue. But we believe our rice futures are a useful product for Japanese farmers, so the government’s decision not to approve them is very disappointing,” exchange president Ikko Nakatsuka said in televised comments.

Samurai, whose wealth at the time was linked to rice, petitioned Tokugawa after prices fell to a record low in the 1720s. In granting the petition, the shogunate overturned a long-standing ban on rice futures, seen at the time as a form of gambling.

Trade rules and practices developed by the Dojima Exchange were later emulated by many commodity, equities and financial futures exchanges that have developed in Europe and beyond since the 1800s, according to the Osaka Dojima Exchange’s website.

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Los Angeles-based Beyond Meat on Wednesday launched the “latest iteration” of its flagship Beyond Burger, billed as “produced locally at a co-manufacturing facility in Canada” and available now through major grocery retailers across the country.

Beyond Meat didn’t say in Wednesday’s release who its co-packer is or where in Quebec it operates, but said “producing the Beyond Burger locally in Canada enables Beyond Meat to better serve the Canadian market, while reducing the company’s environmental footprint.”

Per patty, the latest Beyond Burger offers 20 grams of protein from plant-based ingredients such as peas, mung beans and rice, with marbling made from cocoa butter to melt and tenderize like beef, the company said.

Beyond Meat didn’t say Wednesday exactly how the new product differs from what it has sold until now at Canadian retail, but said it “represents Beyond Meat’s commitment to creating plant-based protein that is indistinguishable (in terms of taste, texture, colour and cooking experience) from its animal protein equivalent.”

Beyond Meat early this year announced it had locked in a multi-year pea protein supply deal with French processing firm Roquette, which itself is expanding its space in the Canadian pea market with a plant under construction at Portage la Prairie, Man.

Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger has been in the Canadian retail market since June last year, followed by Beyond Beef and, more recently, Beyond Sausage.

The company has also brought its products to the Canadian fast food market, through chains including A+W, McDonald’s, Tim Hortons and Subway.

Tim Hortons last year dialed back its Beyond Meat use to the Ontario and B.C. markets. McDonald’s ran a 12-week test of a “P.L.T.” Beyond Burger in southwestern Ontario earlier this year, but hasn’t yet said if it will take that sandwich into other markets, either within Canada or anywhere else.

Beyond Meat didn’t say Wednesday whether its Quebec partner will supply faux-meat for the company’s Canadian restaurant or foodservice customers, or strictly for retail. A message to company representatives Wednesday wasn’t immediately returned. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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