China's food woes

 

Chinese rice production is down 30%

Why Does Xi Jinping Suddenly Talk About “Don’t Waste Food”? Is a Food Crisis Looming in China?

Thailand's drought

Vital rice crops wither in Southeast Asia – Water rationing enforced in almost a third of Thailand – ‘This year is worse than any other’

http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2015/07/vital-rice-crops-wither-in-southeast.html

BANG PLA MA, Thailand, 9 July 2015 (AFP) – Ms Ranong Rachasing would normally be in her fields at this time of the year, toiling in ankle-deep water to make her rice paddies bloom through knowledge honed by years of cultivating Thailand's most celebrated export.

Now the wizened 57-year-old's fields lie fallow, baking under a blazing summer sun.

"This year is worse than any other. There has been no rain, so there is no water. It is the most severe drought I've ever seen," she said while standing in a cracked field in Bang Pla Ma district, Suphanburi province, a two-hour drive north of Bangkok.

Thailand's vital rice belt is being battered by one of the worst droughts in living memory with the prospect of a dismal main harvest.

Water levels in some of the major reservoirs are at their lowest levels in 20 years, prompting the ruling junta to call on farmers in the Chao Praya river basin to delay sowing crops.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has also ordered officials to clear irrigation channels, dig more ground wells and employ cloud-seeding technology to create artificial rainfall. But the wet season has yet to arrive in earnest. [more]

Thailand's vital rice belt drying up

19 July 2015 (CCTV) – A devastating drought is delaying the growing season for Thailand farmers to plant their paddy fields. Taps are running dry, roads are collapsing, and soldiers are guarding canals and waterways. CCTV’s Martin Lowe filed the report from Thailand

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• Thailand’s Chao Phraya river – which supplies drinking water to Bangkok – is turning salty as low flows allow the sea to flood upstream.

• Nevertheless every household in the capital has been urged to store at least 60 liters of drinking water in case the worst happens.

• A third of the country has water rationing – with many areas declared drought disaster zones.

Water rationing takes place in almost a third of Thailand

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26 July 2015 (VietNamNet Bridge) – At the same time these storms and floods are wreaking havoc on the country’s infrastructure and economy as they devastate dikes, canals, livestock, and thousands of hectares of crops annually.

"We have to quicken our actions on mitigation, reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and adaptation," said Hoang Van Thang, deputy minister of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) at a recent conference in Hanoi.

Many have often talked about Vietnam becoming a ‘food bowl’ for Asia, but climate change is a major threat to food security and complicates productivity of a variety of different plants, Thang said.

Most notably, rice output will be reduced by 405.8 kilo per hectare due to the impact of climate change by 2030 and a whopping 716.6 kilo per hectare by 2050 if drastic measures on seeds and cultivation methods are not undertaken.

Over recent years, greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural industry have spiked and in response the government is working with a range of industries and companies on a number of adaptation strategies aimed at reducing them by 20% through 2020.

Vietnam faces more variability in rainfall, prolonged droughts and a greater incidence of extreme weather events Thang said, adding that farmers and poor people are most vulnerable to the negative effects of climate change.

Jong Ha Bae, chief representative of the Food Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Vietnam in turn said Vietnam is now better placed to meet the challenges brought about by climate change following a three-year Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) program.

The three year European Commission funded CSA project obtained remarkable results as a result of close collaboration with MARD, research institutes, local experts and provincial authorities.

The project, which closed last month, was a complicated and costly project that encouraged farmers to abandon or lessen reliance on methods that increase greenhouse gas emissions and transition to alternative more environmentally friendly methods.

Some analyses have shown that the CSA project will help reduce methane emissions (CH4) in Vietnam by 25%-30% and increase rice productivity by 3-5% by 2020.

For her part, the Director of the Northern Mountainous Agriculture and Forestry Science Institute reported that untreated animal manure is contaminating Vietnam’s water supply.

A typical industrial livestock farm collects urine and manure in large cesspools and they commonly leak the Director said.

Full of ammonia, phosphorus, nitrogen, and potentially drug resistant bacteria, leakage seeps into waterways and groundwater, causing high chemical oxygen demand (COD – the main measure of organic compounds in water) and eutrophication.

According to the director, a project for constructing and operating biogas tanks and converting the urine and manure to gas used for cooking to reduce this water pollution is proving quite effective. [more]

Rice shortages in typhhoon-stricken Philippines

Two years of typhoons bring in to stark relief how tenuous the global food supply has become.

With abrupt climate change we can expect production levels to crash because of extreme weather events and changing climate and droughts.

Mass starvation coming soon and people will only pay attention when it is white people dying sadly

--Kevin Hester

Philippines may seek up to 600,000 tonnes of rice imports after typhoon

Reuters,

8 December, 2014

MANILA, Dec 8 (Reuters) - The Philippines' state grains agency said on Monday it will consider importing up to an additional 600,000 tonnes of rice to boost buffer stocks after Typhoon Hagupit damaged crops and prompted the release of emergency supplies.

Crop losses this quarter from bad weather and a projected drop in first-quarter output next year have put the Philippines, one of the world's biggest rice buyers, under pressure to boost imports in order to maintain a healthy buffer stock in 2015.

Fresh demand from the Philippines could support softening rice export prices in main suppliers Thailand and Vietnam.

A team at the National Food Authority (NFA) has recommended that a standing order to import 500,000 tonnes of rice in case of a natural disater should be increased by 100,000 tonnes, NFA Administrator Renan Dalisay told Reuters.

"We're seeking a meeting of the NFA Council to discuss the recommendation of the group in charge of computing our requirements," Dalisay said.

The review would be carried out by a panel of Cabinet members, chaired by Food Security Secretary Francis Pangilinan.

The Department of Agriculture said initial reports showed nearly 20,000 tonnes of unmilled rice from standing crops had been damaged by strong winds and rains from Hagupit, which battered the Philippines over the weekend.

Dalisay said it was too early to give a timetable for any rice purchases or to say whether they would be made through tenders or government-to-government deals.

The NFA bought more than 1.8 million tonnes from Vietnam and Thailand over the past 12 months, aggressively shoring up its buffer stocks while releasing more rice into local markets to bring down retail prices that hit record highs in recent months.

The agency was forced to import more, bringing in the biggest annual volume in four years, after its stocks were almost depleted due to relief efforts and crop losses following category-5 Super Typhoon Haiyan' wrath in November 2013.

Dalisay said the NFA began releasing more rice stocks from its warehouses last week to boost supply in areas expected to be hit by Hagupit, including Samar island provinces where the typhoon first hit on Saturday.

The agency expects to release more stocks, with a number of local government officials in areas hit by the typhoon seeking additional NFA supply, he said.

Any new shipments will be tariff-free and on top of an annual volume of up to 805,200 tonnes that the private sector can bring in. The annual volume attracts a tariff of 35 percent.

China's rice crop

Extreme weather bears down on rice

A shopper buys rice in a supermarket in Yichang, Hubei province. The bad weather that hit China's major rice-growing regions is likely to drive up imports in the world's biggest rice buyer. Liu Junfeng / For China Daily

China Daily,

14 August, 2013

2013-14 import quota set at 5.3 million tons

Drought, heat, heavy rain and floods in China's major rice-growing regions are likely to cut the country's harvest and increase reliance on imports, industry experts have forecast.

An ongoing drought has harmed rice crops in Central and East China's major rice-growing regions such as Hunan and Jiangxi provinces.

Meanwhile, heavy rain and floods have hit Heilongjiang province in Northeast China.

In addition, a heat wave has scorched 13 provincial-level areas and left about 6 million people and 1.72 million head of livestock short of drinking water, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said.

According to the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters, more than 1.87 million hectares of farmland have been affected by the drought in Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi provinces. About 70 percent of the land involved is planted with rice.

Rain of medium to heavy intensity has continued battering Heilongjiang province, where it has flooded 5,300 ha of rice farmland.

Ding Lixin, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing, said the central government had set a rice import quota of 5.32 million tons for 2013-14.

Ding said the rough weather may boost actual rice imports to between 2.8 and 3 million tons this year alone.

China imported 2.36 million tons of rice from international markets such as Thailand and Vietnam in 2012.

"August is an important month for paddy rice to develop, when it needs more water and nutrients to grow. The drought will certainly cut yields and disrupt plans for late planting in South China," Ding said.

Sun Hongrong, who operates a family farm in the suburban Shanghai district of Songjiang, said high temperatures have been a headache since July.

Although his rice-planting area doubled this year to about 13 ha, Sun estimated that output will shrink 15 to 20 percent this year. Harvesting is due to start in about 20 days.

"For good-quality rice, the best temperature for pollination is about 32 degrees Celsius. But the reality in Shanghai is a temperature above 38 degrees Celsius for more than a week," said Sun.

The heat has also pushed up his costs for irrigation and labor.

Rice is different from corn or wheat, in that several countries such as the United States, Canada and Argentina are big producers of the latter grains. The world's other major rice-growing nations are mainly in Asia, such as Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, India and Indonesia.

"The problem that China must contend with is that these countries have limited land and production capacity in comparison with China.

"China might confront a severe situation if the rice output in these Asian countries was cut by natural disasters" or other developments, said Zheng Dawei, a professor at the China Agricultural University in Beijing.

China is the world's biggest rice importer. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has forecast that the country's rice imports will reach 3 million tons, about 8 percent of the total global rice trade, in the 2013-14 crop year.

The country already imported about 1.32 million tons of rice in the first half of 2013, up about 12 percent from a year earlier.

China's National Meteorological Center has said that the heat wave will last only until the middle of August. But the drought may persist until the end of the month, because rain forecast for the final 10 days of the month may prove insufficient.

To tackle the drought, the government has allocated 1.65 billion yuan ($269.5 million) for the exploration of ground water sources, artificial rainmaking, building new water conservation facilities and other relief efforts.

"The impact of the drought on rice output in South China may be limited because the northeastern regions, rather than the south, have become the top contributor to the nation's grain harvest in recent years," said Li Guoxiang, a rural development researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

"However, if the floods in the northeast continue, it will have a worse impact on this year's rice output," Li said.

The adverse weather conditions have triggered concerns that the grain market will be the target of domestic and international speculators.

Li said domestic rice prices won't show a broad-based rise, even if China fails to achieve a second harvest this year, because the global supply-demand equation is balanced. China can adjust by resorting to the international grain markets.

"Grain stocks in China are at a high level, which also weakens the possibility of capital speculation on rice," Li said.

zhongnan@chinadaily.com.cn

Fukushima - contamination of crops

Fukushima farmers decontaminate soil, plant rice, praying for radiation-free harvest

Washington Post,

28 May, 2012

FUKUSHIMA, Japan — Last year’s crop sits in storage, deemed unsafe to eat, but Toraaki Ogata is back at his rice paddies, driving his tractor trailing neat rows of seedlings. He’s living up to his family’s proud, six-generation history of rice farming, and praying that this time his harvest will not have too much radiation to sell.

That conflict is shared by several thousand farmers in more than 7,000 hectares (17,000 acres) of Fukushima, where some of last year’s harvest exceeded government safety standards because of radiation released when the March 2011 tsunami set off the world’s second-worst nuclear accident.

For their rice to be sold, it will have to be tested — every grain of it.

“All I can do is pray there will be no radiation,” Ogata, 58, said last week, wiping his sweat during a break in his 1.5-hectare paddy 60 kilometers (35 miles) from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant. “It’s not our fault at all, but the land of our ancestors has been defiled.”

Rice farming is almost sacred in rural Japan, and the government protects farmers with tight restrictions on imports. Many farmers are too close to the nuclear disaster to return to the fields, but others have gotten the go-ahead, even with the risk their harvests may end up being too radiated to ship.

Hopes are high in this major agricultural northeastern prefecture (state) that farmers will meet the unprecedented challenge of producing safe-to-eat rice in contaminated soil.

Following orders from the government, they have sprinkled zeolite, a pebble-like material that traps radioactive cesium, and added fertilizer with potassium to help block radiation absorption. That work is part of the 100 billion yen ($1.3 billion) Tokyo has allocated for decontamination efforts this year.

There had been no time for that last year. Tens of thousands of bags of rice from that harvest were too radiated to be sold. The government bought those crops, which sit in giant mounds in storage.

Rice planting has been banned in the most contaminated areas, but the government allowed it at some farms in areas that produced contaminated rice last year, including Ogata’s. After the October harvest, their rice will be run through special machines that can detect the tiniest speck of radiation.

Ogata is filled with uncertainty. Though the government recently set up a system to buy and destroy his crop from last year, he has no assurances that it will do so again if this year’s rice can’t be eaten.

He also doesn’t know which experts to believe. Scientists often come to Fukushima to discuss radiation at neighborhood meetings, but some say there will be no health effects at all, while others say tens of thousands may get sick.

Radiation is expected to decline year by year. But Ogata and other farmers acknowledge they are in for a long haul.

Japan has a safety limit of radiation exposure at 1 millisievert per year, although some areas in Fukushima measure higher at about 20 millisieverts. A 20-kilometer (12-mile) no-go zone was set around the nuclear plant, displacing some 100,000 people.

Right next to the no-go zone, in Minami Soma, 135 farms have been granted special permission to plant rice as an experiment but on the condition that all rice, regardless of radiation levels, will be destroyed.

“We couldn’t even plant last year. We are doing everything we can as a whole town so we will be growing rice next year,” said Yukio Nishi, a Minami Soma agricultural cooperative official.

The government toughened its restrictions on radiation in rice and other food from April to 100 becquerels a kilogram (2 pounds) from the emergency 500 becquerels set in March last year. The limits are lower for milk, baby food and drinking water.

Medical experts say risks from low-dose radiation can’t be ruled out, but it may be impossible to prove whether a person got cancer from radiation or something else.

Exposure is cumulative and differs among individuals, depending on size and age, diet and habits. Certain foods, such as mushrooms and bamboo shoots, tend to be high in radition. And children are more susceptible to radiation-related sicknesses.

“The balance that the government is now trying to strike is between allowing people to stay in the Fukushima area and recover their lives, and keeping the rest of Japan happy about buying food,” said Edward Lazo, who advises Fukushima as a radiation expert at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Nuclear Energy Agency. “And that’s a really difficult job.”

Christopher Clement, an expert at the International Commission on Radiological Protection, a global nonprofit authority on radiation health, says the food standards in Fukushima are safe. They are lower than the maximums set in Europe after Chernobyl.

Still, people across Japan — and even in Fukushima — are shunning food grown here, though Takeshi Takagi, a manager at the York Benimaru supermarket chain, said customers are gradually returning to locally grown produce.

York Benimaru has clearly labeled shelves for Fukushima-grown food, and bright banners encouraging shoppers to support local farmers. But some pass right by.

“We have our rice shipped from outside Fukushima,” said Tomohiko Hashimoto, a 30-year-old house-husband, strolling his infant son through the aisles. “We’re careful about what the mother eats, too. She is breastfeeding.”

Last year’s sales of Fukushima vegetables and fruit on the Tokyo wholesale market were 20 percent lower than the 2010 total, according to Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market data. Masataka Kase, spokesman for Tokyo Seika Co., a major wholesaler, said the drop came from crop damage from the disaster, shipment bans for radiation and consumer fears about Fukushima.

Ogata won’t need to sell his rice to skeptics. He plans to sell some of his 10,000 kilograms (22,000 pounds) of rice direct to customers he has cultivated for years, families who live in the area. The rest he will sell to a local farming cooperative that distributes to corporate buyers, such as restaurants, that are more willing to buy Fukushima rice.

A handful of farmers are giving up on growing rice. Some are switching to flowers, which don’t require radiation checks. Others are suing Tokyo Electric Power Co., the utility that operates Fukushima Dai-ichi, for damages.

Fukushima farmer Shoichi Watanabe is angry he even has to worry about radiation.

“See how peaceful this place is,” he said, pointing to paddies filled with gently croaking frogs. “I want to say at the top of my lungs that we would not be going through all this suffering — if only Tokyo Electric had done its job right.”

Impacts of flooding in Southeast Asia

Rice Crops Take A Pounding From Southeast Asian Floods

October marks the start of the main rice harvest in Thailand, the world’s largest exporter of the grain. 

Traders are waiting to see the full impact of flooding on the crop, but it’s already clear that output across Southeast Asia will fall substantially. 

The U.N.’s food agency estimated last week that 12.5% of rice paddy had been damaged in Thailand. Laos, Cambodia and the Philippines also took a hit, with farmers in Vietnam, the second-largest exporter, largely spared."

For full article GO HERE

Results of Thai floods

Floods in Southeast Asia May Cause Food Shortages, UN Says

Oct. 24 (Bloomberg) 

The United Nations is closely monitoring the potential for “serious food shortages” in parts of Southeast Asia after flooding devastated rice paddies and other crops and as aid deliveries are disrupted.

About 12.5 percent of rice farmland in Thailand has been damaged, along with 6 percent in the Philippines, 12 percent in Cambodia, 7.5 percent in Laos and 0.4 percent in Vietnam, as storms hit the region since September, the UN Food & Agriculture Organization said in a report dated Oct. 21. “There are concerns of serious food shortages in the affected communities due to the difficulties in delivering food assistance.”

Crop losses may help sustain a 20 percent rally in rice futures in Chicago this year, adding pressure on food costs and creating more problems for government leaders across Asia, where the grain is the main staple, said Lynette Tan, an analyst at Phillip Futures Pte. The UN Food Price Index of 55 commodities, including cereals, meat and dairy, rose to a record in February.

“We expect rice prices to propel higher, climbing a wall of worry underpinned by strong physical demand,” Tan said from Singapore today.

Thailand, the world’s largest rice exporter, was forecast to account for 31 percent of the 34.2 million metric tons of global trade of the grain this year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Vietnam is the second-largest shipper, according to the USDA. Cambodia was the third-largest exporter in Southeast Asia, while the Philippines was the largest buyer last year, according to the USDA.

Prices Jump

Rough-rice for January delivery climbed 3 percent to $17.215 per 100 pounds at 2:42 p.m. Singapore time, the highest price for a most-active contract on the Chicago Board of Trade since Sept. 21. The export price for the 100 percent grade B Thai white rice, the benchmark in Asia, gained 1 percent to $625 per ton on Oct. 19, taking this year’s advance to 13 percent.

Thailand may lose 6 million tons of rough rice from flooding, paring the main harvest to about 19 million tons, Apichart Jongskul, secretary-general of the Office of Agricultural Economics, said Oct. 21. The damage estimate does not include rice in warehouses that have been submerged, he said.

The country’s main harvest, which typically accounts for 70 percent of annual production, was projected by the farm ministry at 25.8 million tons before the floods.

Infrastructure Damage

Floods have inundated more than two-thirds of the country, causing loss of lives, damage to crops and livestock, closure of factories and severe damage to infrastructure, the FAO said in the e-mailed report.

In Bangkok, residents are stocking up on water, canned food and instant noodles as Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said a “huge amount” of water is flowing into Bangkok due to a broken water gate on the city’s outskirts. Further north in Ayutthaya, families struggled to find food and potable water in floodwaters that reached neck high.

The Philippines lost almost 600,000 tons of milled rice from typhoons that struck the country this year, Lito Banayo, administrator of National Food Authority, said Oct. 20. That’s equal to almost 17 days of demand, according to Bloomberg calculations, based on the national daily consumption.

About 16 percent of the nation’s paddy production was lost to flooding, and at least 485,000 hectares (1.2 million acres) of land planted with the grain, corn and high-value crops damaged, while almost 3.3 million head of livestock and poultry were affected, the FAO said

.

In Cambodia, which was forecast by the USDA to ship 1 million tons of rice this year, the FAO said 1.2 million people were affected by flooding that destroyed homes and damaged paddy fields. Before the flooding, Cambodia was forecast to increase production by 7.2 percent from a year earlier, to a record 8.9 million tons this year, FAO said.

Floodwaters enter Bangkok's domestic airport

Al Jazeera,

23 October, 2011

Authorities declare holiday as more areas in Thai capital get inundated, forcing thousands to move to higher ground.

Authorities have said floodwaters in Thailand have begun entering the north side of Bangkok's second airport used for domestic operations, forcing at least one airline to suspend flights.

For article GO HERE