Rice, baby, rice!

Another contribution from Don Strong of UC Davis.

A fascinating video has appeared on Vimeo, “Filipino Rice Policy.” The topic of agricultural biodiversity is just below the surface of the narrative. The commentators are sophisticated economists and bureaucrats who tell an intriguing story of what amounts to a cult of rice in the Philippines. The crop and the commodity are sacrosanct politically, with secretive and lucrative importation monopolies. The commentary highlights the fact that even with a long history of premier educational and research institutions in tropical agriculture as well as high yields of rice, in few of the last 100 years has Philippine production been sufficient to meet domestic demand. The popular image of rice as the mainstay to the economy and the officially encouraged yearning for rice self-sufficiency are misleading, according to the narrative. First, the country simply lacks the physical land for rice self-sufficiency. It cannot compete in volume with the vast rice-growing areas in mainland Asia (many of which Philippine institutions fostered during the heady days of the early Green Revolution). Also, rice is just one among many crops and commodities in the diverse agricultural economy of the Philippines.

The main theme is that the government importation monopoly for rice is part and parcel of high level corruption that actually threatens food security. It is claimed that some 40% of monies dedicated to importation end up in the pockets of privileged insiders — “cronies” — rather than in the rice bowls of the poor; though the the poor are the prima facie rationale for the importation monopoly. The argument is made that were rice importation opened up, the diversity of agricultural production would increase as farmers made market-based decisions rather than monopoly-based ones; other crops and animals produce more income as well as a richer life for rural agriculturalists. This video is a professional product, well edited, and lively. The dialogue is nuanced and often waxes into advanced political economics. It would be a great supplement to graduate courses in agricultural economics, development, and environmental science. A highlight is disagreement with the theme by one commentator who fears that an end to the monopoly could bring collapse to the rice market, disaster to the country, and the downfall of the politicians who broke the monopoly. While breaking the monopoly would certainly be politically perilous, the Philippines is not among the largest global players in rice. It seems unlikely that their monopoly could be much of a factor in the global rice market.

An important sub theme of the video is how the pro-natalist policies of the Philippines have made food security an increasingly difficult goal. These populations are now much larger, still growing, and a much greater challenge to both poverty reduction and future food security than they were in 1960 when the Green Revolution widely lowered death rates and led to rapid population growth. Persistent poverty of a segment of the agricultural sector is a feature shared by many of the rice economies.

In larger perspective, the Philippines are not alone with such myths. The quixotic propaganda of rice self-sufficiency for the Philippines is analogous to that of oil self sufficiency for the US so prominent in slogans such as “Drill Baby Drill.”

IPBES — IPCC for biodiversity — agreed

I suppose this is a big deal. After a couple of years of negotiations, countries agreed in Korea yesterday to go ahead with the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services — IPBES. You can read about it at Nature and the Guardian. Neither says anything about agriculture or wild relatives, although Professor Bob Watson, vice-chair of IPBES, says it will focus on “poverty alleviation, human well-being and sustainable development”. So far, so unsurprising. According to Nature, one of the problems for countries to agree to create IPBES was its scope, and it has been limited to “new topics” in biodiversity and ecosystem science.

That means we probably can’t look forward to an authoritative estimate of the extent of genetic erosion. Darn.

Nibbles: Hemp, Wheat, Wheat, Conservation, Liberia, Carnival, Climate change, Satoyama, Leafy greens

How many plants feed the world?

A first (of many, we hope) guest post from our friend and colleague Colin Khoury.

In the field of conservation of plant genetic resources, it is commonly stated that a very limited number of plant species feed the world. ((Ah, those meta-narratives! Ed.)) A number of publications, especially in the 1970’s and 1980’s, provided different angles on how many crops or species provide just how much of the human diet. And there are a lot of ways to try to answer the question. Most of the publications end up with numbers around 7, or 15, or 20, or 30 crops that feed the world. Prescott-Allen and Prescott-Allen (1990) found global aggregate statistical data unsatisfactory in telling the full story for peoples of all countries:

Crops such as fonio, Digitaria exilis Stapf, and quinoa, Chenopodium quinoa Willd., are lost in global production data; but to conclude that they are unimportant is to conclude that the people of Guinea, Gambia, and Bolivia who rely on them are unimportant.

Instead, they worked with national level Food Balance Sheets from FAO, and looked at the question in four ways to determine just how many species make up 90% of the total intake of food weight, calories, protein and fat in each country.

The result is “85 species commodities and 28 general commodities contribute 90% of national per capita supplies of food plants.” After a bit of tinkering, they come up with this final statement: “the total number of species commodities is 82. These consist of 103 species. Fifty-six of the species commodities, consisting of 75 species, account for 5% or more of the national supply of a nutritional category in at least one country.”

Still confused? Well, it’s a difficult question to answer. And answers are often underestimates, as statistical data rarely account well for local markets, home production, etc. Prescott-Allen and Prescott-Allen provide some interesting food for thought ((As it were. Ed.)) in working with statistics at the national level, and in doing so perhaps include more species/crops than studies working with global aggregate data.

Has much changed since 1990? A full re-run of their analysis, country by country, is still to be done. But what happens when we aggregate the country statistics from the latest Food Balance Sheets (2007)? Again including the four categories (weight, calories, protein, fat), and counting those crops and food products that comprise 90% of the diet, we find that about 25 crops/species, plus about 7 general commodities, do the job (not listed in any particular order of importance):

Apples
Bananas/ Plantains
Beans
Barley
Cassava
Coconut
Cottonseed
Grapes
Groundnuts
Maize
Millet
Olive Oil
Onions
Oranges, Mandarines
Palm Oil
Potatoes
Rape and Mustard Oil
Rice (Milled Equivalent)
Sorghum
Soyabeans
Sugar Cane
Sunflowerseed Oil
Sweet Potatoes
Tomatoes
Wheat

Beverages, Alcoholic
Beverages, Fermented
Fruits, Other
Oilcrops Oil, Other
Pulses, Other
Sweeteners, Other
Vegetables, Other

A further note, if the alcoholic beverages happened to have caught your eye: ((Don’t look at me. Ed.))

Average alcohol consumption (= beer + beverages, alcoholic + wine + beverages, fermented) = 70 kcal/cap/day = 3% total calories from plant sources. Alcohol consumption is much higher in some countries, such as the Czech Republic: 282 kcal/cap/day, or 11.9% of total calories from plant foods.

Here’s the top 10 countries in providing calories from alcohol: Luxembourg, Ireland, Estonia, Czech Republic, Portugal, Austria, Germany, Lithuania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary. No surprises there.