Like so many other parts of our economies and lives, the rice sector is facing enormous challenges–but also the opportunity to take it in a new direction.
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I was sitting on my balcony in Phnom Penh overlooking the skylines of the bustling city while talking to my son on the other side of the world in mid-March. He told me that he will not fly back to Asia as the COVID-19 pandemic situation worsened.
“I will stay put here; it is just too complicated,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”
From Amsterdam, he would need five stopovers before reaching Phnom Penh.
For many years, we will remember 2020 as a tough year. Over 200 countries are affected by COVID-19. Airports, schools, government offices, and shopping centers are closed down. The virus seems to have brought the entire world to a halt.
Like so many other parts of our economies and lives, the rice sector is facing enormous challenges–but also the opportunity to take it in a new direction.
A crisis we were never prepared for
On 11 March, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic with 118,000 cases reported in 114 countries. Only three and half weeks later, on 04 April, the total reported cases rose to over 1.2 million with 65,000 deaths.
Calling it the worst crisis since World War II, the United Nations Secretary-General declared war on this virus.
We were not prepared to face a crisis like this. Even Bill Gates admitted that he feels as if he is waking up in a nightmare every morning.
Asia’s economic outlook for 2020 is bleak
On 03 April, the Asian Development Bank released the Asian Development Outlook 2020 report citing that regional economic growth will decline sharply this year due to the effects of COVID-19 pandemic before recovering in 2021. Assuming that the outbreak ends and activities normalize, the growth will be as low as 2.3% in China and 4% in India.
The poor are severely affected
As the growth in 2020 slows down, the poor will bear the biggest adverse impact. For most urban workers who live on daily wages, the impact of the pandemic is severe: job loss and sinking deeper into poverty. However, farmers throughout Asia have also started to feel its impact.
The World Bank estimates that only about 24 million people will escape poverty in 2020; pre-COVID-19, the estimate was 35 million.
Currently, 479 million people in Asia go to bed with empty stomachs every night. As more people face serious economic problems perhaps there will be more joining the ranks of the hungry at bedtime.
What does all of this mean for the rice sector?
More than 3.5 billion people eat rice each day. It is the single largest food source for the poor. Millions of families rely on their incomes from rice farming. COVID-19 raises critical questions on the fate of the rice sector and people whose survival depends on it.
According to experts, the virus will not cause a rice shortage at this stage unless panic buying and export bans persist. India, the largest rice exporter, has massive stocks. There is plenty of rice going around even if Vietnam and Cambodia have imposed temporary export bans on rice to ensure their domestic supply is sufficient.
A former colleague at the Food and Agriculture said that Indonesia and the Philippines, the two biggest rice importers in Asia, are in good shape supply-wise and won’t need much in the next few months. Indonesia just finished its main harvest. The Philippines has good stocks and is in the middle of a substantial dry-season harvest.
However, there can be a number of setbacks if adequate measures are not taken now.
The exodus of migrant workers causes labor shortages. Labor shortages will soon cause hurdles in both harvesting and planting. With not enough people to farm, there can be serious repercussions, not only for rice producers but also for consumer nations. The northern breadbasket states of India–Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh–face serious labor shortages for the next harvest season.
Logistical restrictions can have significant impacts on the delivery of supplies, e.g. seeds and fertilizers, to farmers. In China, the government is straining to get supplies and equipment to farmers.
Transport of rice to markets seems to have been interrupted due to the lockdowns. It has brought the export of basmati rice to a standstill in India. Companies face tremendous challenges in maintaining logistics and supply lines due to the lack of manpower.
In a worst-case scenario, it may mean missing the next planting season which can be disastrous.
Lessons learned
Technologies keep the society going. As social beings, we need to be connected. Technologies help us feel less isolated in the current situation.
Thanks to technologies, students in many parts of the world can continue their classes online. For many of us, working from home is the new normal. In Korea, online food purchases rose 92.5% compared to the same period last year while daily necessities rose 44.5% year on year.
Many experts believe that our society is transitioning to digital commerce.
Going back to normal, really?
In the many meetings I attended in the last few weeks, a common question I heard was when will things get back to normal?
We all seem to miss our normal life.
My biggest question is whether we really expect things to be as they were before.
We should be spending time to critically question which parts of the ‘past normal’ we want to regain and define our new normal of farming.
For agriculture, change from a conventional system can be much more rapid.
Realizing that labor can be a big issue, mechanization will be high on the agenda. Robots may take over much of the labor force sooner than expected. The use of artificial intelligence will shape the agriculture of tomorrow.
Building resilience is key.
More crises will undoubtedly occur in the years ahead. Agriculture must encompass holistic approaches to maximize the resilience of livelihoods, communities, institutions, and ecosystems by maintaining the ecological integrity of rice landscapes, in effect, managing it sustainably and adaptively. Resilience will involve safeguarding biodiversity, avoiding the overexploitation of natural resources and ecosystem services, staying vigilant against pests and diseases, and monitoring agriculture landscape health.
But the future is so uncertain, we need to be better prepared.
Even I am still unsure if I can eventually meet my son this summer. Time will tell.
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Dr. Yasmi is IRRI’s regional representative for Southeast Asia. He coordinates the institute’s activities in the region and leads the development of the overall regional as well as country strategies for IRRI’s research, outreach, training and capacity strengthening, and resource mobilization.
