Feeding a Hungry Planet: Rice, Research, and Development in Asia and Latin America

FEEDING A HUNGRY PLANET

FEEDING A HUNGRY PLANET

RICE, RESEARCH, AND DEVELOPMENT IN ASIA AND LATIN AMERICA

JAMES LANG

THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS

CHAPEL HILL AND LONDON

© 1996 The University of North Carolina Press

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lang, James, 1944–

Feeding a hungry planet: rice, research, and development in Asia and

Latin America / James Lang.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

ISBN 0-8078-2284-1 (cloth: alk. paper).

ISBN 0-8078-4593-0 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. Rice—Asia. 2. Rice—South America. 3. Rice—Varieties—Asia. 4. Rice—Varieties—South America. 5. Agricultural innovations—Asia. 6. Agricultural innovations—South America. 7. Rice—Research—Asia. 8. Rice—Research—South America. I. Title.

SB191.R5L37 1996

338.I′6—dc20 95-50150

CIP

00 99 98 97 96 5 4 3 2 1

www.uncpress.unc.edu

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 ASIA

Rice Facts

Keeping Ahead

Genetic Improvement

Production Technology

On-Farm Research

Training

Lessons

2 BRAZIL

Contrasts

Developments

Rice in Brazil

Santa Catarina

Rio Grande do Sul

A Walk

The Cerrado

Solutions

3 CHILE

Working with Farmers

Rationale

4 COLOMBIA

Rice in Colombia

Tropical Pastures

Caquetá

Detours

5 CONCLUSIONS

One Size Fits All

Models

Back to the Future

Developments

Notes

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is not mine. It belongs to the scientists, extension workers, and farmers who feed this hungry planet. What is original belongs to them. The mistakes are mine.

With support from the Rockefeller Foundation, I visited four international agricultural research centers: the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, the International Potato Center, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, and the International Rice Research Institute. I also went to local projects and research stations in Brazil, Colombia, Chile, and the Philippines. I promised the Rockefeller Foundation a book about agriculture people would actually read. I promised them the details and the big picture. I hope I kept my promise.

I am grateful to Vanderbilt University and the Department of Sociology for their support. The dean of the college, Jacque Voegeli, and my chairman, Jack Gibbs, approved a leave staggered over two years. I did most of the fieldwork during the spring and summer of 1989 and 1990.

The Rockefeller Foundation did not impose its views on my work. It is certainly not responsible for my conclusions; I went to the Rockefeller Foundation only once in my life.

Jack Reeves encouraged me to keep writing and doing fieldwork. In 1993, I went to the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center in Taiwan; in 1994, to the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics in India; and in 1995, to the International Potato Center’s regional office in Indonesia. Thank you Jack.

Charles Tilly encouraged me to do what I wanted to do. Thank you Chuck. William A. Christian read, marked up, and complained about the original version of the book. Thank you Bill. Robert Huggan at IRRI and Tom Hargrove at CIAT kept me supplied with reports, newsletters, and press releases; they answered my questions; they gave me good advice.

I am grateful for the reviews by Tom Hargrove and Alan Fletcher. Karen Moldenhauer at the rice extension center in Stuttgart, Arkansas, checked for rice-specific errors.

At the University of North Carolina Press, I owe a special debt to board member Major Goodman. His pointed criticism, attention to detail, and sound advice gave my editing a sense of direction.

Lew Bateman supported the project from the start and wrote to the Rockefeller Foundation on my behalf. Thank you, Lew.

INTRODUCTION

The rice paddy and the office building create different modes of thought and consciousness. The modern world sees through the eyes of the city. Urban demand for energy, raw materials, and food are at the heart of the planet’s ecological crisis. For the city, energy grids, trade, and transit come first; protecting farms, forests, and fragile ecosystems is secondary. Sophisticated urbanites may understand the stock market, but they know next to nothing about the planet’s food crops. Understanding a rice paddy, however, is as important for our common future as electronic mail and free trade.

The industries of the future will be knowledge-based: brainpower linked by computers and fiber-optic cables. How easy it is to forget about the knowledge packed into a grain of rice. Agriculture has always been a repository of knowledge: about crop rotations and when to rest the soil, about insect cycles, about reading the signs in nature. It still is. The new global technology of fax machines and the Internet is remarkable, but there is a greater wonder in a rice paddy.

This book is about rice, the crop the world depends on most. It describes how farmers grow it, the distinct environments within which it is produced, and the impact modern varieties have had on yields. It looks at how the knowledge that sustains the crop is preserved internationally, shared by rice-producing countries, and applied locally. It examines ways to grow more rice in a sustainable way and considers prospects for the future.

Between 1960 and 1990, Asia’s population nearly doubled, increasing from 1.7 to 3.1 billion.¹ Despite predictions to the contrary, rice production kept ahead of population growth.² For productivity, nothing comes close to the earth itself. From just 90 kilos (1 kilo = 2.2 pounds) of seed, small farmers in Asia produce 6 metric tons (1 metric ton = 1,000 kilos) of rice—with nothing more than a mixture of nitrogen, water, earth, and air.

DEFENSE

To look after the computer’s welfare, we depend on the corporate world: from IBM and Zenith to Nippon Electric and Phillips. But what about the welfare of the planet’s food crops, its rice and wheat, its maize (corn) and potatoes? Whose job is it to safeguard a crop’s genetic diversity, track the spread of new insect biotypes, or identify plant diseases? Whose job is it to help the planet feed itself without destroying the natural resources that make food production possible?

During the 1950s, the population of most developing countries increased at unprecedented rates. To feed their growing populations, countries had to produce more food. In the United States, research at land-grant colleges had already improved basic crops such as wheat and maize. Well-organized county-level extension programs promoted new varieties and production methods. Maize is an outstanding example. Average U.S. yields increased from 1.8 metric tons per hectare (1 hectare = 2.47 acres) for 1938–40 to 2.4 tons for 1948–50. A decade later, in 1958–60, yields were up another metric ton. By 1978–80, average maize yields surpassed 6 metric tons.³

WHEAT

In 1943, the Rockefeller Foundation and Mexico’s Ministry of Agriculture signed a joint agreement for research on food production. The Mexican project followed the research-training-extension model that was so successful in American agriculture. Norman Borlaug, working with his Mexican counterparts, headed up wheat breeding.⁴ Success first came in 1955 after a decade of work. Borlaug and his colleagues crossed semidwarf winter wheats with Mexican spring wheats. Orville A. Vogel had developed the semidwarfs at Washington State University’s agricultural station in Pullman. The wheat’s short stature came from Norin 10, a wheat variety native to Japan. The result for Mexico was a high-yielding wheat that set more grain; it had strong, short stems that supported the added weight without falling over. It took another seven years to overcome susceptibility to rust and to improve the grain quality. In the meantime, improved varieties began reaching farmers and wheat yields started to rise: from an average of less than 1 metric ton per hectare for 1952–53, Mexico’s wheat yields increased to 1.5 metric tons for 1957–60. Beginning in 1962, the project released a new line of disease-resistant semidwarfs. For 1967–70, yields averaged 2.8 tons.⁵

To get maximum benefit from improved varieties, Mexican farmers had to buy high-quality seed, apply nitrogen fertilizer, and irrigate the crop. Using this new approach, Mexico’s wheat production mounted steadily from 1.4 million metric tons in 1960 to 2.2 million tons in 1970. For 1987–90, wheat production averaged 4 million metric tons with yields of more than 4 metric tons per hectare.⁶

The new semidwarfs produced high yields almost everywhere Mexico produced wheat. As news of the project’s success spread, scientists in wheat-producing Asian countries asked to try the new varieties. With support from the Rockefeller Foundation, Borlaug set up wheat trials in India and Pakistan, which agronomists from each country managed. The semidwarf wheats did much better than expected. Between 1966 and 1968, wheat yields in Pakistan rose from .7 metric tons per hectare to 1.1 tons; total wheat production increased from 3.9 million to 6.4 million metric tons. India also had impressive gains in production: from a total of about 11 million metric tons of wheat in 1966 to 16.5 million tons in 1968.⁷ The keys to success were the semidwarf wheats and the new production technology. For his work on behalf of the world’s food production, Norman Borlaug received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1970.

RICE

Compared to wheat, research on semidwarf rices lagged dangerously behind.⁸ In tropical Asia, rice is a necessity of life. Yet despite growing populations and mounting food deficits, yields improved little. The Rockefeller Foundation wanted to organize an international effort in rice but lacked the capital to support such a venture alone. In 1958, however, the Ford Foundation expressed interest in a joint project. Together the two foundations established the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in 1960 in the Philippines. The Ford Foundation provided more than $6 million to build and equip the research facility, and the Rockefeller Foundation hired the staff and paid operating costs. By 1962 IRRI’s rice research was underway. The institute’s objective was to develop a short, high-yielding, nitrogen-responsive rice variety and to work out a new production system. Three years later, IRRI released its first improved rice variety, IR8.⁹

The Rockefeller Foundation appointed Robert F. Chandler as IRRI’s first director general. Chandler, in turn, selected IRRI’s first board of trustees. Thereafter, the board appointed new trustees and selected a new director general when the post became vacant. The first board had ten members, including Chandler, ex officio; one representative each from the Rockefeller and Ford foundations; three representatives from the host country, the Philippines; and four at-large members—in this case, distinguished scientists from Japan, Taiwan, India, and Thailand. Terms were staggered. In 1965, the number of at-large trustees was increased to eight. During IRRI’s first twenty years, thirty-seven at-large trustees from nineteen countries served on the board. Six were from the United States.¹⁰ The board has played a key role. Its first chairman was J. George Harrar of the Rockefeller Foundation. He was followed in 1963 by Forest F. Hill from the Ford Foundation, who held the post for the next fifteen years. Harrar and Hill, along with Chandler, were IRRI’s founders.

Meanwhile, the research the Rockefeller Foundation supported in Mexico was reorganized and expanded. In 1966 the foundation established the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) to work on production problems in developing countries worldwide.¹¹ The work of the two centers, and the new wheat and rice varieties they created, generated a green revolution in agriculture. In just fifteen years, between 1965 and 1980, combined wheat and rice production in developing countries increased by an average of almost 75 percent.¹² India is a prime example. Instead of the famine experts had predicted for the 1970s, the country ended up with a grain surplus. Comparing the periods 1964–65 and 1969–70, average wheat production grew from 11 million to almost 22 million metric tons.¹³ The impact on rice was slower but no less significant. Harvests rose from an annual 35 million metric tons in 1965–66 to almost 40 million tons a decade later.¹⁴ In 1970, the United Nations Economic and Social Council awarded its Science Prize jointly to IRRI and CIMMYT.¹⁵

EXPANSION

Encouraged by their success in wheat and rice, the foundations funded two more centers. The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), founded in 1967 near Cali, Colombia, worked on beans and the tropical root crop cassava (maniac). Both crops originated in the Americas but had spread worldwide.¹⁶ The center’s mandate also included tropical pastures and rice. As to pastures, the task was to reclaim degraded ones and make new grazing lands ecologically sustainable. With respect to rice, the job was to adapt the Asian semidwarf varieties to Latin America’s growing conditions and market preferences. The same year, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) was founded in Ibadan, Nigeria. Its mandate included traditional African crops such as yams, plantains, and cowpeas, as well as maize and soybeans, crops with great potential for food production.

For 1968–69, the combined budget for the four centers came to $3 million—$750,000 to each center by each foundation. In the long run, that was more than private foundations could afford.¹⁷

With backing from the World Bank, the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), a loose association of foundations, donor countries, and international organizations was formed in 1971. Called the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), it took over responsibility for funding the centers. Assisted by the Technical Advisory Committee, CGIAR oversees the work the centers do. That task is considerable.

What started out in Mexico as a small research project in wheat is now a multifaceted strategic operation that is international in scope and regional in character. In 1972 there were six centers, in 1976 there were eleven, and from 1979 to 1991, there were thirteen. In 1995, CGIAR funded sixteen centers.¹⁸

STRATEGY

Without the added wheat and rice the new semidwarfs made possible, Asia would have faced a terrible food crisis. Instead, many Asian countries, including India, became self-sufficient. In 1980, the added output from improved wheat and rice varieties worldwide was worth an estimated $56 billion.¹⁹

The transformation the green revolution engendered has, in turn, created new problems. Farmers use much more fertilizer now than before, they spray pesticides even when insects pose no threat, and the genetic base of crops is narrower today than it used to be. The link between IRRI’s research, national programs, and local extension is often weak. Nonetheless, supporting rice research is a good investment in the future. At its best, IRRI’s work shows how an international, science-based strategy can be geared to the problems of poor countries and small farmers.

To illustrate what the work of a center is like, this book uses IRRI and CIAT as examples. The many factors that can effect crops are illustrated using the case of rice, with examples drawn from countries in Asia and South America. It could have been other crops, other centers, and other countries; I did not lack alternatives.

FIELDWORK

My first visit to a center was to CIAT in 1983. At the time, I was writing about rural development projects in Colombia.²⁰ What interested me was whether the research done at CIAT actually benefited local farmers. The more fieldwork I did, the more complicated the question became. No matter how good CIAT’s research is, it does not set the region’s agrarian policy. How quickly a new variety or production strategy spreads depends on a country’s approach to research and extension.

A national program’s research on a specific crop reflects that crop’s importance domestically. Brazil, for example, is Latin America’s biggest rice producer. Per capita consumption far exceeds that for Mexico or Bolivia; so too does its investment in rice research. In Goiás State, Brazil has a national rice research center. Farther south, the country’s top rice-producing state, Rio Grande do Sul, has its own rice research program and extension system. So Brazil can cooperate with CIAT on rice. To determine how rice research actually works, however, interviews at CIAT were not enough. I had to follow the story to local testing sites and extension outposts in Brazil.

Besides rice, I also did fieldwork at CIAT on cassava, beans, and tropical pastures. But I spent as much time with agronomists at national centers and local research stations as I did at CIAT. And the project soon spread to other centers. It was hard to tell whether my experience at CIAT was typical—after all, there were eight crop-oriented centers. So I added the International Potato Center (CIP) to the scheme and visited potato projects in Chile, Bolivia, and Colombia. Since the green revolution had started with wheat in Mexico, I went to CIMMYT. As was true with other centers and crops, I traced its research back to national programs and local extension, in this case, to Brazil’s center for wheat breeding in Rio Grande do Sul and its center for work on maize in Minas Gerais State. In short, there were many centers, many countries, many crops, and no easy answers.

My experience in Latin America did not prepare me for Asia and its rice. A billion people in Asia eat rice every day, at every meal, almost exclusively. For the rest of Asia, including prosperous, urban countries such as Japan and Korea, rice is still a mainstay. At IRRI, I studied the diverse rice-production systems of monsoon Asia. Field trips were mostly to irrigated fields of transplanted paddy rice, the farming system under which most of Asia’s rice is produced.

REPORTS

By the time I put a temporary halt to more fieldwork, I had visited extension projects and research centers in eight countries on three continents. I had interviewed farmers, extension workers, and research scientists on topics ranging from breeding strategies, biotechnology, and disease resistance to cropping systems, pest tolerance, and soil stresses. I had worked on many crops, including rice, wheat, maize, potatoes, beans, and cassava. I had typed, arranged, and outlined more than a thousand pages of field notes.

There is much good news to report: CIAT’s work on the biological control of cassava pests, how Brazil became self-sufficient in wheat, how CIP helped Andean communities improve potato storage, about resistance in beans to bruchid storage pests, and about sustainable pastures. There are reports about how CIMMYT helped villages produce their own maize seed, about IRRI and what made the rice revolution possible, about how centers preserved a crop’s genetic diversity. I did not want to leave out anything.

It took a while to temper the ambition to write one big book. I decided instead to plow my fields one at a time. I had done more work on rice than on any other crop and pursued it in both Latin America and Asia. As a result, this book is mostly about rice. Nonetheless, the problems that beset rice production, from insect pests and acidic soils to diseases and droughts, crosscut crops. There is much detail; but in agriculture, it is the details that often matter the most. With insects it is the specifics about plant hoppers and spittlebugs that count. For agriculture, the biggest story is often, literally, the smallest seed. The particulars help us understand the abstract principles.

In agriculture, IRRI and CIAT recognize there are no definitive solutions. A variety’s resistance to disease and pests is frequently temporary rather than permanent. There is always another virus or leaf hopper lurking. Pathogens and insects constantly beat the latest technology. Consequently, security rests on collective effort, from the work of a center’s research scientists to national testing programs, extension teams, and farmers. A good way to understand this is to look at rice in detail.

SOURCES

The text that follows is based mostly on interviews in the field with research scientists, agronomists, and extension workers. They told me about the work they did and the problems they faced. Many interviews lasted just an hour; some went on for several days as part of a field trip. In Latin America, I took handwritten notes in Spanish, Portuguese, or English. Later, I used a typewriter to reconstruct a fuller version. My rule was to finish a complete version before leaving a site, so there was usually a chance to go over points that needed clarification. Nonetheless, the notes I ended up with are my version of what people told me. I have kept direct quotes to a minimum, paraphrasing, occasionally with the aid of footnotes, instead. The field notes cited are deposited in the library at Vanderbilt University. They are organized by center, by the national program involved, and by local agencies. Pages are numbered sequentially.

From centers, national agencies, and projects, I returned with many boxes of books, bulletins, and annual reports. Where possible, I have cited research relevant to the topic discussed published by the person interviewed. The book also relies on statistical information published by international, national, and local agencies.²¹

FEEDING A HUNGRY PLANET

1. ASIA

If I skip rice at breakfast, said Tom Tengco, mounding a sticky heap on his plate, my stomach grumbles rice, rice, rice until noon. On our way through Manila, we had stopped at a Jolibee, a Filipino-style fast-food joint. It was 6:00 A.M. and the place was crowded. At Jolibee, customers take a break from the chaotic world of jeepneys, trucks, and buses that makes up Manila’s morning traffic. Breakfast choices include rice with fish, rice with chicken, and rice with vegetables. Tom added fish to his rice. I asked for french fries, as the potato was the only thing that to me even vaguely suggested breakfast. It took a while for the french frier to warm up.

Tom is a wiry man in his early thirties with a narrow face and intense brown eyes. He works at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), located at Los Baños, about 40 miles south of Manila. He has a degree in agronomy from the University of the Philippines, whose main campus adjoins IRRI. An autonomous research and training center, IRRI helped develop the semidwarf rice varieties that revolutionized Asian production. When I met Tom Tengco, I was at IRRI learning about its rice research. I had done this kind of work before at international centers in Colombia, Peru, and Mexico, but none of the interviews, field trips, and stops at local projects had prepared me for rice in Asia.

RICE FACTS

Wheat, rice, and maize (corn) directly supply half the calories consumed by the 5.6 billion people on the earth.¹ Wheat has the edge in acreage. During 1992–94, farmers planted an average of 222 million hectares (1 hectare = 2.47 acres) of wheat, compared to 147 million hectares worldwide for rice and 130 million for maize. As a food crop, however, rice surpasses wheat. On no other crop do so many people depend so much. For 1992–94, the world’s harvest of rough rice averaged 530 million metric tons (1 metric ton = 1,000 kilos). Of this, 91 percent was produced in Asia, and Asia has more than half the world’s population. In 1994, the three top rice-growing nations, China, India, and Indonesia, had a combined population in excess of two billion; they accounted for almost two-thirds of the 535 million tons of rice the world produced.²

About 60 percent of the world’s wheat crop goes to human consumption; about a third is exported. By contrast, human consumption accounts for 85 percent of total rice production. During 1991–93, not more than 3 percent of the world’s rice crop was traded internationally; in fact, most rice is consumed within ten miles of where it is produced.³

How much rice do people eat? In the United States, per capita consumption of milled rice averages about 8 kilos (1 kilo = 2.2 pounds). In China, by contrast, rice consumption is 90 kilos per person. For Indonesia, it is 136 kilos; in Burma and Laos, it is almost 200 kilos. At least a third of the calories for some 2.8 billion Asians comes exclusively from rice; for Bangladesh and most of Southeast Asia, it is more than 70 percent.⁴ In Asia, rice is not just another crop; planting, harvesting, and eating rice is a way of life.

Most of Asia’s rice is produced by small farmers with irrigated paddies of 1 hectare or less. The Philippines is no exception.⁵

Growing Rice

Tom Tengco’s work takes him to many project sites in the Philippines. Getting farmers to try an unfamiliar technology can be difficult. It is one thing to