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New Rice to Increase African Yield by 50 Percent By Mithre J. Sandrasagra UNITED NATIONS, Apr (IPS) - A new rice variety has been developed that can yield up to 50 percent larger harvests without the use of fertiliser. The new variety was unveiled by the West African Rice Development Association (WARDA) at a workshop on Apr. 9 to 12 in Bouake, Cote d'Ivoire. The meeting, co-organised by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the Government of Japan, the World Bank, the United States Association for International Development (USAID), the Rockefeller Foundation and the African Development Bank, will establish a group of partners for the promotion and dissemination of the new variety. Designed for resource-poor farmers by WARDA, the new variety will help reduce poverty and save developing countries millions of dollars in rice imports, UNDP emphasised. The new rice, know by the acronym NERICA (New Rice for Africa) is a result of crossing African and Asian species. In addition to the significant gains in production, the new varieties also mature 30 to 50 days earlier than the currently grown varieties, according to WARDA. The new variety is also substantially richer in protein, more resistant to disease, drought and acid soils, resists some of the most damaging insect pests in West Africa, and can out-compete weeds, says UNDP. ''NERICA is an excellent example of how science can be put to work for poverty reduction. It is already having a real impact on improving poor farmers' incomes and increasing their food security,'' said Peter Malton, a UNDP official who worked on the project. This is an example of how simply bringing available science and technology to the rural parts of Africa can achieve a lot, Fawzi Al-Sultan, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) emphasised at the release of IFAD's 2001 Annual Report. The 'Green Revolution' of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s did not happen in Africa, Al-Sultan, told reporters. ''Technologies which had helped Asian economies to move a lot faster had not reached Africa,'' he continued. According to IFAD, over 70 percent of the world's extreme poor, estimated at 1.3 billion, live in rural areas and use over half their income to obtain staple foods; they receive over two-thirds of their calories from this low cost source and usually produce it themselves. Yet, often they cannot afford enough food to provide safe amounts of energy or micro-nutrients. NERICA ''has great potential to become the second miracle rice - in Africa'', said Ken Fujimura, a Senior Advisor at UNDP's Special Unit for Technical Co-operation among Developing Countries. From 1965 to 1985, rice, wheat and maize production in much of the developing world experienced a big technology shift, the 'Green Revolution', that increased yields, enhanced employment and brought about a rapid fall in poverty. The Green Revolution was the main source of a more-than-doubled aggregate food supply in Asia over 25 years, with only a four percent increase in the cropped area, according to 'Transforming the Rural Asian Economy: The Unfinished Revolution', published by the Asian Development Bank. These effects have stalled since then; the potential of existing technology seems to be nearly exhausted and new challenges are being posed by urban expansion, land lost to erosion and water depletion and diversion to towns. ''The real value of aid to agriculture is now one-third of what it was ten years ago,'' Michael Lipton, Director of the Sussex University Poverty Unit said. New technologies have historically played a central role in creating reductions in poverty, IFAD stresses in its 'Rural Poverty Report 2001', pointing to the move from hunter-gathering to crop/animal farming in 5000 BC China and the first irrigation revolution characterised by big centrally managed tanks and small outlying wells in 200 BC Sri Lanka and South India. The major scientific breakthrough that NERICA represents was highlighted in three years of trials, during which farmers, very often women farmers, played a vital role of actually selecting strong varieties in the field. Today, ''pro-poor, sustainable technical progress must seek robustness, stability, yield enhancement and labour-intensity'', says IFAD, which vehemently promotes the active participation of local farmers in setting priorities for research and extension. Several best practice elements were used to develop NERICA, including biotechnology, gender sensitive participatory varietal selection procedures to take full advantage of indigenous knowledge, and partnerships between institutions, researchers and farmers. High yielding varieties and agrochemical fertilisers, when wisely used, have proven their great potential for reducing rural poverty, says IFAD. However, the transition since 1850 from farmer-dominated, bio-agricultural research, and since 1980 its increasing privatisation, threaten to deny, to poor farmers and consumers, both gains from and control over technology. If technological progress excludes the poor, IFAD warns, ''poverty will be little reduced even by improvements in assets, institutions and markets''. ''It
is within the capacity of the countries concerned and the international
community to eliminate famine and tackle food insecurity in Africa,''
stressed the FAO at a meeting of donors to the Horn of Africa Initiative
held in Rome last month. The FAO will hold a special meeting to
review progress towards the goals set at the 1996 World Food Summit
in November 2001. (END/IPS) |
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