Drought / Flood and poverty in rice belt

Agriculture is the mainstay of the Indian economy. It accounts for 24% of the gross domestic product (GDP) and 15% of total exports. It provides livelihood to 65% of the population and direct employment to 58% of the workforce (DAC 2004). Rice is the single most important food grain; it occupies 36% of the gross cropped area and accounts for 42% of the total food-grain production in India. The eastern Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam, West Bengal, and Orissa are the major rice-growing areas, accounting for about half of the total rice production in the country. Much of this production is carried out under rain fed conditions. In India, drought is a perennial phenomenon, recurring every few years.

Irrespective of the probability estimates used, the expected proportionate loss is highest for Orissa(in 2004) and lowest for Chattisgarh. The total annual loss in rice production for the three states combined is 1.0 to 1.3 million tons, which is about 7–9% of the mean output. Using the average rough rice price of $125 per ton, the value of annual production loss estimated this way is $125 to $175 million. Rice is the main kharif-season crop in all three states.

“one year drought creates a 5 year problem” Sukraram Dhuru from Raipur’s Kumarkhan village

The loss in agricultural output is not the only consequence of drought. In rural areas where agricultural production is the major source of income and employment, a decrease in agricultural production will set off second-round effects through forward and backward linkages of agriculture with other sectors. The loss in household income can result in loss in consumption of the poor, whose consumption levels are already low. Farmers may cope with the loss by liquidating productive assets, pulling children out of school, migrating to distant places in search of employment, and going deeper into debt. The economic and social costs of all these consequences can indeed be enormous. Rain fed rice-growing areas in sub-humid tropics have low agricultural productivities and are the major “poverty hotspots.”

Hydrological drought is defined as the situation of depletion in surface and subsurface water resources due to a shortfall in precipitation.

Agricultural drought is said to occur when soil moisture is insufficient to meet crop water requirements, resulting in yield losses.

Agricultural and hydrological droughts are almost inevitable when meteorological drought occurs (Situation in which actual rainfall is significantly below the long-term average).

When drought occurs, the agricultural sector is usually the first to be affected. Even though the meteorological drought is over, the adverse economic impact of drought may persist for several years depending upon the nature of drought. In addition, people who were poor even during normal years are likely to be pushed deeper into poverty.

The above data is to understand the effect of drought:

1.      To understand the nature and magnitude of drought risk in drought-prone rice- growing areas,

2.      To estimate the economic costs of drought at the aggregate level,

3.    To estimate the economic costs of drought at the farm-household level, and analyze farmers’ drought-coping mechanisms,

4.      To analyze the impact of drought on poverty, and

5.    To suggest alternative options for technology and policy interventions for the effective management of drought.

This reflects in the low average incomes in the village, across all land categories. Many people have migrated elsewhere in this village in pursuit of alternate employment, as there is no opportunity in the village after heavy damage from the cyclone.

The economic costs of drought to rainfed rice farmers and to the nation as a whole are on the order of several hundred million dollars per year. Farmers use various coping mechanisms to deal with the consequences of drought. These coping mechanisms are, however, inadequate to prevent a reduction in income and consumption, especially of the poor and vulnerable groups. Drought in these three states alone can push an additional 13 million people below the poverty line. In addition, people who are poor even during normal years get pushed deeper into poverty during drought years. De- spite the considerable expenditures made to provide relief to drought-affected areas, to improve soil moisture availability through watershed programs, and to generally reduce vulnerability to drought through agricultural development programs, the overall economic and social costs of drought continue to remain high.

Drought is a major constraint to rice production in Asia, where at least 20% of the total rice area is drought prone. When rice is grown under rain fed conditions, both the area sown and the yield depend mainly on the available rainfall; any shortage in rains translates directly into production losses. Although most other natural disasters, such as floods and cyclones, result in visible and immediate loss of life and infrastructure, the effects of drought are creeping and long-lasting. It cripples the livelihoods of a large number of people, often trapping them in perpetual poverty. Even without the extremes of starvation and death, drought is a major economic and social burden that slows economic growth and makes escape from poverty enormously difficult.

A powerful example of drought’s impact on rice production is seen in the zigzag trend in rice yields in Orissa, one of the major drought-prone states of eastern India. Almost every upward movement in rice yields is followed by major down-swings, most of which are caused by drought. Orissa experiences drought once every three or four years and often in consecutive years. It is the severity and frequency of drought that largely account for the slow growth in rice production in Orissa over time, and similar patterns are seen in other drought-prone areas in eastern India.

Drought results in production loss not only of rice and other crops grown with rice, but also of subsequent non-rice crops that require the rice fields’ residual soil moisture. The value of production loss resulting from drought is indeed very large. In three states of eastern India—Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Orissa—where rain fed rice is grown widely, the average production loss of rice during drought years is estimated to be 5.4 million tons—over 30% of the annual production in non drought years. In severe drought years, the loss can rise to as high as 40–50% of normal production. When production losses of rice and non-rice crops are considered together with the costs farmers bear by adjusting their production system to try to cope with drought, the total annual economic loss in these three states alone is close to US$400 million. 

And, as opportunities for farm employment dry up in the face of drought, so too do the incomes of farm laborers who rely on rice production for their wages. It is estimated that in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Orissa, almost 13 million people who sit perilously just above the poverty line fall back below it due to drought-induced income loss. Others already below the poverty line in non-drought years are pushed further down.  If drought occurs in consecutive years, the situation is even worse. As farmers go into debt and liquidate their productive as-sets—such as bullocks, farm implements, and even land—they are trapped even deeper within a poverty from which escape becomes more and more difficult.

Analysis of rainfall data for India highlights the increase in the frequency of severe rainstorms over the last fifty years. The number of storms with more than 100 mm rainfall in a day is reported to have increased by 10 percent per decade (UNEP 2007).

Rice :: Asia 1920 - 1990

Rice is a staple food for more than a third of mankind. It constitutes the diet of one thousand six hundred million people and another four hundred million rely on it for between a quarter and half of their diet. Nutritive value of Rice protein (biological value =80) is much higher than that of the wheat (biological value =60) and maize (biological value =50) or other cereals.

Rice is a self-fertilizing plant. Around 1920, however, Japanese and U.S. rice breeders took the lead in using scientific approaches (hybridization selection and testing) to improve rice varieties. Elsewhere, pure line selection among farmers’ varieties was the main method of breeding.

After World War II, many Asian countries started to use hybridization as the main breeding approach. Through the sponsorship of the FAO, several countries in South and Southeast Asia joined in the Indica-Japonica Hybridization Project during the 1950s, exchanging rice germ plasm and using diverse parents in hybridization.

These efforts, however, provided very limited improvement in grain yield (Parthasarathy 1972), and the first real breakthrough came during the mid— 1950s when Taiwan (first) and mainland China (second) independently succeeded in using their semidwarf rices in developing short-statured, nitrogen-responsive and high-yielding semidwarf varieties (HYVs). These HYVs spread quickly among Chinese rice farmers (Chang 1961; Huang, Chang, and Chang 1972; Shen 1980).

Taiwan’s semidwarf "Taichung Native 1" (TN1) was introduced into India through the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) located in the Philippines. "TNI" and IRRI-bred "IR8" triggered the "Green Revolution" in tropical rices (Chandler 1968; Huang et al. 1972). Subsequent developments in the dramatic spread of the HYVs and an associated rise in area grain yield and production have been documented (Chang 1979a; Dalrymple 1986), and refinements in breeding approaches and international collaboration have been described (Brady 1975; Khush 1984; Chang and Li 1991).

Rice production in Asian countries steadily increased from 240 million metric tons during 1964—6 to 474 million tons in 1989—90 (IRRI 1991). Among the factors were expansion in rice area and/or irrigated area; adoption of high-yielding, semidwarf varieties (HYVs); use of nitrogen fertilizers and other chemicals (insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides); improved cultural methods; and intensified land use through multiple cropping (Herdt and Capule 1983; Chang and Luh 1991).

In the early 1970s, China scored another breakthrough in rice yield when a series of hybrid rices (F1 hybrids) were developed by the use of a cytoplasmic pollen-sterile source found in a self-sterile wild plant ("Wild Abortive") on Hainan Island (Lin and Yuan 1980). The hybrids brought another yield increment (15 to 30 percent) over the widely grown semidwarfs.

Along with the rapid and large-scale adoption of the HYVs and with deforestation and development projects, innumerable farmers’ traditional varieties of all three ecogenetic races and their wild relatives have disappeared from their original habitats — an irreversible process of "genetic erosion." The lowland group of the javanic race (bulu, gundill) suffered the heaviest losses on Java and Bali in Indonesia. Sizable plantings of the long-bearded bulus can now be found only in the Ifugao rice terraces of the Philippines.

Rice :: Oryza sativa

French geographer Pierre Gaourou points out in his book Riz et Civilisation(Rice and Civilization), rice was not a factor in emergence of the civilization(the Indian and Chinese civilization existed long before rice acquired its later dominant position)

It is certainly true rice has influenced, indeed fashioned, the rited and social structure of these civilization by the demand it imposes upon them, including the need for availability of the large labour force and mastery of the growing environment. Rice had a great influence in the live and mind of the people of the region of Asia . The deep rooted notion of the “rice soul”, the Tamil festival of Pongal, the Kalapana system of ancient Thailand and the Azolla cult in Vietnam.

Rice botanically belongs to Oryza sativa L. of Gramineae family. Paddy is a self-pollinated crop. A complete seed of rice is called paddy and contains one rice kernel. Outer layer of rice shell is called husk. The next layer is called rice bran and the innermost part is called rice kernel.

Over time, three sub-species of Oryza sativa developed: Indica, Japónica and Javanica. The designation Indica was used to label the tropical rices and sub-tropical varieties of India and China, while Japónica covered the short- and round- grained varieties of Japan, China and the Korean peninsula. Javanica was used to designate the bulu (awned or bearded) and gundil (awnless or beardless) rices of Indonesia. The summer rices, the aus varieties of eastern India and Bangladesh and the Iong-panicled and bold-grained rices of Indonesia, which showed a high affinity with both the Indica and Japónica rices, were classified as an Intermediate type.

Conventional method of rice cultivation uses 60-70 kilos of seeds per hectare

 A prodigious amount of labor is required to prepare the soil, plant the rice, flood it, weed it, harvest it, thresh it, and polish it for use -- all by hand.

Oryza sativa is the most widely cultivated of the world’s rice species, is generally believed to have instigate , the same expression. “eating rice, to convey the idea of “a meal” or eating in general in many languages use. Cooked Rice in India is commonly known as Bhaat.