High rice prices to last for some time -- experts
Agence France-Presse
First Posted 12:25:00 04/11/2008
MANILA, Philippines -- Rice prices are likely to keep rising for some time as production of the staple fails to keep up with soaring demand, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) said Friday.
The Philippines-based institute earlier warned of potential civil unrest as governments struggle to provide cheap rice amid a sustained rise in prices over the past two years to near-record levels.
"Longer term demand-supply imbalance is clearly indicated by depletion of stock that has been going on for years,” the latest edition of the IRRI publication Rice Today quoted IRRI economist Sushil Pandey as saying.
"We have been consuming more than what we have been producing and research to increase rice productivity is needed to address this imbalance," Pandey added.
Just 7.0 percent of the annual global production of the grain, a staple food of more than three billion people mostly living in the developing world, is traded in the international market.
This was because rice was seen as a political commodity and governments strive to maintain large stocks to guard against large price swings, IRRI said.
The institute said it had convened a group of experts to draw up a list of what could be done to solve the crisis and they agreed that raising yields was the only long-term solution.
IRRI said the crisis was affecting both the urban poor as well as rice farmers who farm small plots that cannot produce enough even for their own family's use.
"Although the current rising rice price was seen as beneficial for farmers who grow a reasonable surplus that they can sell on the market, poor farmers with small or no surplus and poor urban consumers will continue to lose out if the price continues to rise," it said.
Philippine Rice Research Institute head Leo Sebastian urged governments to increase investment in agricultural research.
"(The) impact of technologies is a driver of increased rice production, whether a country exports or imports," he said.
"But everybody is saying that investment in agricultural research is small or limited -- and something needs to be done about this."
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