The 2-day Webinar

Sustainable Rice Production (SRP)

With a focus on organic rice production

8-9 December 2020

Rice is the world’s most important crop. It has supported a greater number of people for a longer period of time than any other crop. The ability to produce a surplus beyond the immediate needs of the producers, which followed perhaps 1000 years later, made possible the initial development of the communities from which the great population centers of Asia arose. Today rice farming still feeds more people than any other crop.

The reasons why rice has been able to support so many for so long are due to the physical environment in which rice is grown. The high rainfall of the monsoon lands, and the fact that nutrients and fertile sediments are carried with the floodwaters that seasonally flow into these areas, provided the essential requirements of the crop from the time that it was first cultivated several thousand years ago until recently. But now the burgeoning population of Asia has outstripped the natural capacity of the rice areas to produce the flow of nutrients and water that are the essential requirements of the crop. Nutrients now have to be supplied using heavy dressings of inorganic fertilizers, and flood waters stored behind huge dams for later release to the rice fields. Rice varieties able to produce greater yields than any grown before have been bred. While the earlier methods of rice production proved sustainable for millennia the sustainability of the new methods of production giving much greater yields, has still to be established.

Sustainability may be defined in several ways. For a subsistence farmer it means survival. If a farming system cannot be sustained the people supported by it will either discover a new and more sustainable system or perish. This is an irrevocable truth.  As population increases, the problems that arise when the interests of one group impinge on those of another soon start to become important.

Primary factors to consider when considering the future of rice production and its sustainability are climate change, limited soil and water resources and population growth. Sustainable agriculture as one of the aspects of sustainable development of rice cultivation plays an important role in food production in proportion to the growing population of the planet and preserves non-renewable resources of pollution. Sustainable Rice Production would:

• Provide safe, healthy, sustainable and quality rice to consumers
• Generate decent profits and jobs for all actors along the value chain, especially for smallholder farmers (men, women and youth)
• Reduce the environmental impact of rice cultivation and to preserve the environment for future generations

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