PEOPLE AND THEIR PROBLEMS

New Delhi, 11 March 2006

Manipulations Of The West

MOVE TO MONOPOLISE RICE TRADE

By Radhakrishna Rao

 Thanks to the indifference of the major rice growing countries in Asia, western agro-business multinationals are trying to further their monopoly control over rice which is a major staple food of the majority of the population in Asia. After the failed attempt of the US-based Ricetec to monopolize aromatic, long grained Basmati rice, the Swiss biotech giant Syngneta, which in association with the Myriad Genomics Inc of USA, has mapped the genetic sequence of the rice, has been making subtle attempts to monopolize the cultivation and trade in rice which happens to be the staple food of nearly half the global population.

Rice is also the staple food of the three most populous nations on the earth—China, India and Indonesia. Clearly and apparently, rice has intimately been associated with the culture, lifestyle, food habit and sociology of the sprawling Asian continent.

Nearer home, western multinationals are keen on taking control of the well endowed rice bank at the Indira Gandhi Agricultural University at Raipur. This unique rice bank, which has a collection of around 170,00 strains for rice was set up  by the brilliant and renowned agricultural scientist R.H.Richaria who all through his life fought against the machinations of the western seed companies. It was   a well conceived campaign by Dr.Vandana Shiva, well known eco activist and scientist which thwarted the efforts by multinationals to take over this unique biological legacy. As pointed out by Vandana Shiva the only agenda of the western multinationals is monopolize the cultivation and trading in important food crops including rice and wheat.

With the genetic structure of the rice having been mapped out in great detail, researchers are now in a position to zero in on the beneficial genes accurately and precisely and engineer rice varieties that combine advantageous features from different strains of rice. “This is a breakthrough of inestimable significance not only for science and agriculture but also for all those people who depend on rice as their dietary staple’ says Joachim Messing of Rutgers University in New Jersey.

The Las Banos-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) continues to be a pioneer in developing high yielding and disease   resistant varieties of rice. Interestingly, wild strains of rice have been found to be a rich source of genes having resistance to insects or diseases. According to Darshan Brar, a rice breeder at IRRI, wild rice strains tolerate a wide range of extreme conditions including arid environment, acidic soils and high altitudes. Says Gurudev Kush, a former IRRI principle plant breeder, “because wild germplasm is not fully exploited, there is still great potential to develop new rice varieties”.

According to IRRI sources, hybrid rice can yield upto 20% more grains than the inbred, local varieties. As it is, to produce hybrid rice, one needs distinct male and female parents .However, the condition is that one of the parents must possess a trait known as Cytoplasmic Male Sterility (CMS).”When you grow rice by direct seeding, the weeds may overpower it and strongly affect the rice productivity and yield “says Brar and adds, “If we can transfer weed competitive ability into cultivated rice, then the rice grown by direct seeding will automatically suppress the weeds and reduce the need for herbicides”.

Of course, there are more than one lakh known varieties of rice. But then just two varieties—japonica and Indica—provide one fifth of the world’s calories, feeding around 2-billion people in the  Asian countries alone. The japonica strain is known to contain more than 37,000 genes packed in about 72 chromosomes. According to Takoji Sasoki, Vice President of the National Institute of Agro-biological Sciences at Tsukuba in Japan, the genetic sequencing or rice is a vital step towards boosting the rice yield. Incidentally, the importance of rice stems from the fact that it is the staple food of more than 3-billion people around the world, who depend on it as much as 80 per cent of their calorie need.

As a matter of fact, rice cultivation is believed to be  in vogue  for 10,000 years. In India, down the centuries rice has been considered a symbol of wealth, prosperity and auspiciousness .In the religious texts of India, rice has been glorified as “prana” or the vital life force.

Even as the worldwide efforts are on to push up the level of rice yield, research projects have gone to show that rice yield could be adversely affected by the changing global climatic regimen .In particular researches are worried over the negative impact of the ongoing process of global warming It has been estimated that the world rice output should go up by 1% per year to meet the burgeoning demand of a fast growing population.

But then as things stand now the much of the increased production should come from the existing crop land .For it is not longer possible to bring fresh land under rice cultivation. According to Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) all through the last decade global rice production increased at rates marginally higher than those of the population growth. Currently, China and India account for more than half of the total global rice production. Because rice holds the key to food security, it continues to remain subject to governmental control in most Asian countries.

“As rice continues to be one of the most traded commodities, under protection, it presents considerable scope for further liberlization. However, due to its importance in income generation and political stability .Governments are often reluctant to lower their control over the rice sector” says a farm expert.

In India, the productivity of rice has now touched 2,500-kg per hectare and the country continues to occupy second position in rice export, next only to Thailand As things stand now, there is a realization in the country that rice output should be boosted without brining in additional land under rice crop.

Against such a scenario the focus of the agricultural research institutions in India has been on breaking the genetic yield barriers, improving input yield efficiency and developing environmentally acceptable strategies for decreasing the losses inherent in pest attacks and outbreak of epidemics. There is also a growing realization of the potentials of the several native strains of rice in withstanding pest attacks and extremes of climatic conditions .Efforts are also known to develop salt resistant strains of rice so that areas with saline land pockets could be used to grow rice. In the ultimate analysis, researchers are keen on developing a wide range of high performance rice varieties suited to grow under varied topographical and climatic conditions.---INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)