Of the world’s 1.1 billion poor people, almost 700 million people with income of less than a dollar a day reside in rice-growing countries of Asia. Rice is a staple food in Asia and accounts for more than 40% of the calorie consumption of most Asians. Poor people spend a large proportion of their income...
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Rice is the staple food for around two-thirds of the Chinese people. China ranks first in annual total rice production (about 185 million tons) and second, after India, in annual total planting area (29 million hectares). The country produces 35% of the world’s rice with 20% of the planting area. Rice production in China has more than tripled in the past five decades...
Ask someone to think of a rice field and odds are they’ll imagine a flooded paddy. Growing rice in puddled fields works well as long as there’s enough water to do it. But, increasingly, that’s not always the case. As populations increase and the industrial and urban sectors compete with agriculture for water, “aerobic rice” offers a water-saving alternative to...
In 1962, scientists at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) debated the cause of low and stagnant rice yields in the tropics: was it variety or crop management? This debate ended with the release of the semidwarf IR8 in 1966, initiating the Green Revolution. The same variety, in the same year, extended this revolution to Latin America, beginning in Colombia...
The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that renewable energy sources account for about 13% of the world’s total primary energy supply. Nearly 80% of these renewables are in the form of combustible biomass—mostly wood, charcoal, crop residues, or other wastes burned for cooking, heating, and other activities in the developing world. Now, high oil prices and...
