A second Green Revolution in agriculture will help meet the challenges of rising global food demand, said Robert S. Zeigler, Director General of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).
Delivering the 24th Coromandel Lecture on “Cutting Edge Rice Science for Food Security, Economic Growth and Environmental Protection in India and Around the World,” Zeigler said the world needs to produce an additional 114 million tonnes of rice by 2035 to meet the rising demand and ensure food security.
At present, the world rice output and consumption is around 460 million tonnes, Zeigler said stating that “there is no global surplus.”
“To meet growing food needs and face the parallel challenges of improving nutrition and reducing poverty under a changing global climate, a second science-based Green Revolution in agriculture is already under way” Zeigler said on Wednesday evening.
The IRRI and its collaborators in the new Global Rice Science Partnership (GRiSP) are already tapping into the other ongoing revolutions in genetics, molecular biology and plant physiology to develop better traits that are resistant to climate change, use less water and produce more, Zeigler said.
Stagnant area, declining water table coupled with labour shortage and drop in yield growth to less than a per cent are among the major constraints to boost global rice output.
“Raising overall yield growth rates back to near 2 per cent is critical to future global food security” Zeigler said. The past gains in rice production that provided adequate supplies over the past 30-40 years were a result of annual yield growth exceeding 2 per cent combined with area expansion.
Stating that climate change will affect rice farmers in the years to come, Zeigler said that IRRI and its partners in India and elsewhere have been working on developing climate-ready rice varieties that are tolerant to flooding, drought and salinity.
He further said that IRRI has taken the initiative to develop a global rice information gateway - an information hub that provides real time crop condition reports, short-to-medium term projections on output, consumption, trade and prices under different trade policy regimes. Such an initiative will help the timely information needs that have become an urgent matter in these times of low stocks.