Chat with Duncan Macintosh--Part 1

Rice Terraces in Batad

There’s a crisis heading for the Philippines and genetic scientists are scrambling to avert it. In 2004, when China really began its economic boom, they imported rice for the first time in 50 years. They only imported 1% of their rice—which doesn’t sound like much—but for a country of 1,300,000,000 people, that’s enough rice for 13,000,000 million people, or 10% of the world’s rice needs.

According to Duncan Macintosh at the International Rice and Research Institute (I.R.R.I.) that single act changed the whole rice market. Beijing gave one million in subsidies to farmers just to keep them growing rice. He said the global market heard this “giant sucking sound”—China coming into the market.

Why does this matter? It’s not a good time for China to need rice for an extra thirteen million people. Rice stocks are at a thirty year low because of countries like China and India which have had five years of falling rice production. As individuals in the country get wealthier, farmers get more income from outside sources and leave farming behind. Rice farmers are diversifying into other farming markets. Agricultural land is being used for parkland or development, and there is less water available in general. Also, as China and India import more rice, Vietnam and Thailand are pulling back their exports, stockpiling essentially, which reduces the rice on the market and raises the price.

Some of this is good news; it indicates that developing nations are pulling themselves out of poverty. But these recent developments terrify countries like Indonesia and the Philippines. The combination of thirteen million new mouths on the market and low rice stocks means that the market price of rice is set to double in about two years. And while China—now booming economically—can afford that, the Philippines can’t.

“If they don’t achieve self sufficiency in China, they can afford to buy all the rice they need,” Duncan said. “But the Philippines can’t afford to compete with China. That’s why they support any GMO rice they can—especially higher yielding varieties. They just cannot compete with India and China.”

“Indonesia, one of the worlds biggest rice importers, spends about 20-30 million USD importing rice. They spend 2 million USD on GMO research. If they could become self sufficient through GMO and not have to import, it’s a pretty persuasive argument to spend more on new technologies.”

Only Japan and Korea are wealthy enough to subsidize their own farmers. Governments have to keep prices down, otherwise people will rebel. “If I was in the government right now,” he said, “I would feel this enormous pressure. If you can’t ensure your people are fed, what good are you?”

It’s not as if Philippine farmers are less productive than their Asian counterparts. In fact they’re four times more productive than Thai farmers per hectare, and they use fewer pesticides.

The problem is that they’re an island, just like Indonesia and Japan. All of these countries have been importing for decades. The Philippines has four million hectares of rice growing over 7000 islands, while Thailand has nine million all in one section of the country. When all the rice is grown in one place, transport, irrigation, and fertilizer are much cheaper, and there’s just more land to farm in general.

“We’re always asking ourselves, ‘What can we do to solve the problems of small scale farmers?’”

That’s where biotech rice comes in.