Shaping Future-Ready Food Systems, One Crop at a Time

Rice

“Have you eaten rice yet?” is not a literal yes/no question in China. Translated to “Chi fan le mei you?”, the question is synonymous to “How are you?” or “Hello!” and has been used as an everyday greeting for many centuries.

One can hear different versions of the same traditional greeting in Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand, and the Philippines. In Japan and Korea, rice is the subject of hundreds of time-honored wisdom proverbs, like “Others’ rice cakes always look bigger”, which is very much like the West’s “The grass is always greener on the other side.”

These proverbs and greetings are a testament to the way rice and its cultivation have shaped cultures, norms, and languages in the region, as well as economic and geopolitical landscapes. The crop is front and center in national food security programs, and continues to be at the top of the list of most traded agricultural commodities worldwide. Even in Africa, where rice is not a traditional daily staple, it is the fastest-growing commodity crop and regional demand is expected to outstrip supply to the tune of about USD$6B per year.

On a sprawling rural campus south of Manila lies the headquarters of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). For 60 years, IRRI’s work on rice has played a pivotal role in increasing agricultural productivity and providing technological and innovative solutions for governments and farmers across Asia and Eastern and Southern Africa and it continues in work with AfricaRice to adapt solutions across African landscapes.

While IRRI has made significant headway in charting paths for scalable development impacts in both Asia and Africa, much remains to be done. Climate change, widening income gaps, and a rapidly growing population are challenges for the rice sector, which currently provides food for half the world’s people.

The greater irony of the situation is this: the numbers of those who cultivate rice for a growing global population have been dwindling with time, growing older, and many of them are in some of the world’s poorest and most climate-affected locations.

Increasing urbanization and the rising middle class have also led to stratification within most developing countries, resulting in hunger and food scarcity. In fact, in South Asia, there exists a “triple burden” where countries deal with the issues of undernutrition, malnutrition, and obesity all at the same time.

Agriculture and Cities

Structural transformations such as urbanization have resulted in a mixed bag of opportunities and challenges. By 2050 and despite steady decreases in the world’s arable land, demand for food is expected to increase anywhere from 59-98 percent. Much of the demand for rice will be shaped by Asia’s growing middle class, whose preferences for rice are rapidly changing along with their lifestyles and nutrition priorities.

In a study entitled “Hidden linkages between urbanization and food systems,” authors Karen Seto and Navin Ramankutty highlight shifts in norms and attitudes about food and how these play into the conversation on cities and agriculture. They explore questions on how new urban spatial configurations affect food demand, and how changing preferences influence resource use and the environment.

Supermarkets now have a wealth of highly-processed and high-calorie food items of low nutritional value, while agri-enterprises and small-scale producers of nutritious food still lack access to viable markets. Then there’s the issue of food safety, which has received newfound attention in the middle of the COVID-19 health crisis.

In one example, Seto and Ramankutty highlight the faster pace of life in the city, necessitating reduced meal cooking times. While this may sound trivial, it actually requires researchers and scientists to come up with new or enhanced crop varieties and food and packaging innovations. Governments, on the other hand, are expected to do some heavy lifting. This will include revisiting existing policies, which, in their present state, may not address negative externalities on consumption, social welfare, and health.

These call into question the sustainability of present food systems, many of which have been in place for decades and in some countries, for centuries. In Southeast Asia for instance, rice is closely interconnected with other food sectors, and evolving trade policies of major exporting countries like Thailand and Vietnam have made the region susceptible to market shocks and price instabilities.

Governments must take a “food systems approach”, which basically means contextualizing food systems and broadening the framework beyond just value chains and markets. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Director-General Qu Dongyu calls on leaders to consider the nutritional, environmental, cultural and social aspects involved in food systems, and underpin transformational change by political will and investments and innovation, including technology.

Multi-Stakeholder, Interdisciplinary Linkages

Transforming food systems in an increasingly urban setting will also require discussions on domestic and international trade, as well as the importance of strong working partnerships to support targeted research.

Over the years, IRRI has built networks to prepare for food systems transformations. As early as 2014, we published a paper in partnership with the World Bank and FAO aptly entitled, “Rice in the Shadow of Skyscrapers: Policy Choices in a Dynamic East and Southeast Asian Setting”. The paper used foresight to revisit traditional policy instruments across countries, and laid out several policy options that are more in keeping with changing contexts.

The paper is an exercise in partnerships. Economists, program managers, agricultural scientists, and other experts weighed in on challenges in the rice sector, and proposed policy directions informed by multi-disciplinary perspectives.

In 2017, IRRI and UN Environment established the Sustainable Rice Platform, a global alliance that has developed standards and performance indicators for rice cultivation that takes into account social, economic, and environmental dimensions.

As countries strive to improve performance and meet indicators both of the Platform and the SDGs, rice shall ideally be made more affordable, livelihoods of smallholders will be improved, and production will have reduced environmental impacts. Urbanization will no longer be a threat, but will play an important role in the stability and sustainability of local markets.

In fact, IRRI’s decision to hold the 2018 International Rice Congress in Singapore was a strategic move. The city may not be a rice producer, but it is a significant logistics and shipping hub for rice trade, and is being eyed as an ideal location for a rice futures market to ensure the availability and affordability of rice worldwide.

Finally, in April 2019, IRRI, WorldFish, and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) embarked on a project on the sustainable intensification and management of rice-fish production systems in irrigated landscapes and wetlands in South and Southeast Asia. This agreement is part of an overall “food systems revolution” under the CGIAR 2030 Plan, which leverages partnerships and integrates sustainability, genetics, socio-economics, and information to meet the SDGs.

This agreement exemplifies a food systems approach to transforming the global rice sector. The combined global research expertise and influence of IRRI, WorldFish, and IWMI in the core elements of diets such as rice and fish, as well as land and water systems make this strategic collaboration essential to a food systems revolution.

Conclusions

Most Asian countries continue to place rice at the center of food security imperatives, even as rural populations migrate and arable land dwindles along with the number of farmers. Africa, on the other hand, has yet to maximize its potential in rice production and position the crop as a strategic commodity for poverty reduction, economic self-sufficiency, and food security.

Untangling complex food systems in these regions requires significant paradigm and policy shifts. For the rice sector, these shifts can be launched with a thorough and strategic stocktaking of the opportunities and challenges at hand. With only ten years left to achieve the SDGs, IRRI is focusing its efforts on helping governments achieve Goal 2: Zero Hunger and Goal 13: Climate Action.

A new food system will rely on, among others, suitable metrics to aid decision-making along the transformation process. IRRI’s Asi@Connect RICESTATS Database, launched in late 2019, is intended to become a first-of-its-kind one-stop resource with a displayable dashboard for rice statistics. It will contain data from household surveys conducted by IRRI globally and will also feature data from national agencies and international organizations.

As decision-making becomes more informed, policies at the local, national, and global levels will also require greater reconciliation and convergence. Leveraging its experience, IRRI has developed future scenarios, policies, and strategies for rice agri-food systems using impact assessments to develop forward-looking, market-driven, climate-resilient, and gender-responsive breeding product profiles and production standards. These insights feed into policy recommendations for interregional and international networks and consortia either initiated, or facilitated, by IRRI.

Finally, IRRI continues to articulate the inevitable trade-offs between the four main goals of nutritional health, environmental sustainability, economic prosperity, and food security. If food systems are to be truly transformed at all, they have to be transformed with the far future in mind. This means looking at projections for 2050 and beyond, from demographics and climate scenarios to consumer trends and the political economy. In this context, the work of IRRI and its partners has never been more relevant.

Field Notes

The Chicago Council is pleased to present the blog series, "Breaking Ground," to explore how food systems innovation and agricultural research and development can empower farmers and feed the world. This post is part of a special subsection of this series, "Field Notes," which features voices from Feed the Future Innovation Labs and CGIAR centers.