(Photo: IRRI) “Rice is life” truly lives up to its meaning in India, where its origin dates back to as long ago as 2500 B.C. In this vast country, rice is a staple food for more than half of its billion-plus population, and a source of livelihood for more than 50 million households. Apart from its...
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The global financial crisis may have slowed the consumption of various commodities, but Asian demand for grains (as food and feed) remains strong. The first World Grains Trade Summit held on 17 to 18 February 2009, organized by the Centre for Management Technology in Singapore, reported that demand for 2009 will largely come from Asia. As the world continues to recover...
Food security is back on the global agenda. With the recent food crisis, public attention has returned to issues of availability and affordability, particularly for the urban and rural poor. Responses to the accelerating changes in food stocks and prices in recent months ranged from interventions at the policy level to calls for longer term strategies, including greater...
Rising fertilizer prices and misperceptions about environmental degradation in intensive agriculture have stimulated claims that so-called “low-input” technologies relying on organic nutrient sources may provide a more sustainable means of producing food crops and increasing farmers’ income. However, the sole use of organic technologies would likely perpetuate food...
As we grapple with the world rice crisis, I think of Alexander Humboldt, Henry Bates, Alfred Russel Wallace, Charles Darwin, and Richard Spruce. These extraordinary naturalists wove their exceptional powers of observation into the bases of the modern sciences of biogeography, meteorology, geology, tropical biology, and evolution. Their wide interests and insight contributed...
