Rice in South Asia

The South Asia region comprises of the countries of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Bhutan, in addition to the contested region of Kashmir lying towards the North of India and East of Pakistan. It is the world’s most densely populated region, housing close to 2 billion people, which is around one-fourth of the world population, with an area that is only 3.5% of the world’s surface area. Despite having a period of marked economic growth in the past 2 to 3 decades, depending on the country, this region still has the distinction of being the 2^nd poorest region in the world with more than 500 million people living with an income of less than 1.25$ a day¹⁶² (the poverty threshold was revised in 2015 and increased to $1.90 per day).

In terms of food security, the region is home to the largest population of undernourished people.

It has been reported that the situation could have been much worse in absence of the Green Revolution, which steered improvement in the food security in South Asia, primarily with the use of high yielding varieties of rice. Rice has played an indispensable role in improving the food security as well as livelihoods in South Asia, and has the potential to further contribute in this direction, given that in the face of current day challenges like water scarcity, soil emergency, and climate change, a rethink of different agricultural practices is needed^162–164. In Asia, generally, stable prices of rice have been directly linked to food security as it forms the staple food for more than 50% of the population^165,166. In South Asia, however, this percentage is even higher, at 70%¹⁶⁶, making it the most rice dependent region in the world in terms of population, in addition to being the second largest rice producing region in the world, 41% of its arable land under rice cultivation¹⁶⁷. Thus, improving rice production as well as improving the ecological performance of the rice farming system is an effective approach to ensure food security as well as tackle ecological challenges in South Asia¹⁶².

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In India, rice farming covers a quarter of the total cropped area and contributes 42% of the total grain production and 45% if the total cereal production. In Bangladesh, the world’s sixth largest rice producer, rice farms form almost 80% of the cultivable land and rice constitutes 92% of the annual food grain production. Pakistan is the world’s fourth largest producer of rice even though its staple food is wheat. As of now, only India and Pakistan are self-sufficient in rice in South Asia; the annual import of rice was 1.84 million tons in 2011¹⁶². Agriculture in general has a significant effect on the GDP of south Asian economies and rice forms an important aspect of the same. About 60% of the labour force in South Asia find their employment in agriculture while as agriculture contributes 22% of the regional GDP¹⁶⁸ (Figure 13). The contribution of rice to GDP however is on a decline in South Asia, having contributed 8.4% of the total GDP in 1961, which declined to 2.7% in 2007¹⁶².

Figure 13. Relative share of agriculture, industry, and services in GDP and employment in South Asian countries (World Bank, 2016)

Given that rice provides up to 70% of calories and up to 55% of proteins in the diet in South Asia, the importance of rice cannot be understated, with the population predicted to exceed six billion by the end of the century. This has to be seen, also in view of the challenges like water scarcity, soil degradation, agrochemical misuse, and poor infrastructure. Agricultural economy is basically rice economy in South Asia and gaining self-sufficiency in rice production can essentially translates to achieving national food security in the different south Asian countries.

It can be argued that the proportion of undernourished people globally has declined, however it would be reductionist to use this number as an indicator of global prosperity because of the substantial variation across regions²⁵. Agricultural research in South Asia since the ‘Green

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Revolution’ has mostly focussed on increasing the yield of rice and wheat through technological interventions and it has been successful to meet the regions food production goals²⁰. However, South Asia is home to 28.3 and 24.5 million stunted children in the dominant rice wheat farming system and the rainfed mixed farming system respectively. Among the top ten farming systems based on the number of stunted children, in fact, South Asia is home to five of them. Clearly, the focus needs to be also on the nutrition and not just the yield^25,162.

Smallholder agriculture is the focus of the current agricultural forums at national and international levels, after their initial neglect in the early years of agricultural research²⁵. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), which was set up in the 1970s has kept supporting smallholders as its strategic priority because of the fact that smallholder and family farms provide the bulk of the consumed food worldwide¹⁶⁹. In this regard, the UN declared the year 2014 as the International Year of Family Farming. The international research umbrella organisation CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) also reviewed its strategy in 2008 and renewed focus on poor farmers’ needs¹⁷⁰. Smallholder farming should not just be classified as such on the basis of land holding; it has been described as the type of farming which is done under a general scarcity (smallness) of resources, which barely satisfy the farmers’ basic needs¹⁶⁹. On a land holding basis, however, anything below 2 ha is considered smallholding. However, in South Asia, the threshold is much lower than this global standard. Worldwide, there are an estimated 500 smallholder farms (and families), which lead to the full-time or part-time employment of about 2.5 billion people, in addition to providing food for 80% of the population in Asia and Africa^63,171,172. In South Asia, smallholders constitute at least 75% of the total number of farmers¹⁷³ and it is common that women take major responsibility in producing food, in different roles, in this scenario¹⁷⁴. It is a paradox, though, that smallholders, despite contributing majorly to the global food production and consumption, are net buyers of food and constitute the majority of world’s economically poor and undernourished population131,169,175,176. This is the reason empowering smallholders with sustainable and less input-dependent strategies of farming is important to achieve the goals of eradicating poverty and hunger from the world and to maintain global food security; in fact there is no other example of rural and agricultural development that works better in this direction^176,177. It is estimated that at least 50% of the food needs of the world population in 2050 will be produced by smallholders¹⁷⁸. In terms of reducing poverty, smallholder agriculture is expected to have major impact in the regions of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia¹⁷⁹.

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However, the interventions in smallholder agriculture in the global South need to move beyond the ‘green revolution’ thinking of the 1960s and 1970s. Although, the Green Revolution did lead to increase in agricultural productivity, many of the interventions led to severe environmental degradation, the effects of which are being felt currently¹⁷². As a result, the food security challenge in our times is as big as it was 50 years ago, but we can no longer avoid the aspects of climate change induced complexities and sustainability requirements. The deceleration of yield increases over the past five decades is also a matter of concern and puts into question the gene-manipulation and input-intensification based strategies of yield improvement in the context of increasing food needs, while at the same time maintaining the health of ecosystems¹⁸⁰. Hence, across some regions, new agricultural strategies need to aim at increasing the productivity generally as well as offsetting the climate-related and degraded resources-related yield losses¹⁷⁶. This points to a renewed focus on the areas of climate change adaptation, on farm biodiversity, crop diversification, natural resource management, and sustainable intensification169,171,172,181–186. The focus also need to be put on agroecosystems with degraded soils, which could not benefit from green revolution interventions, which were more suited for favourable conditions. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has included ‘halting land degradation and rehabilitating degraded land and water resources’ as a top research priority, accordingly¹⁸⁷. It is pertinent to note here that the incidence of weeds in rice farming system is one of the single largest sources of yield losses and represent 6.6% of the yield gap in South Asia²⁵. In this regard, agroecological strategies like the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) that aim at rebuilding degrading ecosystems and making the best use of existing capabilities of the soil need to be made more common, preferably through farmer-participatory research in South Asia¹⁷³.