Rice – scenario :: INDIA

Rice – scenario :: INDIA

68% of the world’s irrigated area is in Asia, and that about half of this land is used for rice.

Rice is also the most important crop to millions of small farmers who grow it on millions of hectares throughout the region, and to the many landless workers who derive income from working on these farms. 

Economic pressure is likely to move land, water, and labor away from rice to other activities.

Under the Business as usual reference scenario, the price of rice will increase almost 50% by 2025, and will continue to increase, although at a slower pace, from 2025 to 2050.

Labor :: By far the main costs in rice farming are land and labor, saving labor in rice cultivation has a price because many poor laborers receive a substantial portion of their income from available work in rice fields, and lower rice prices may force wages down. In the short run, laborers will have difficulty finding new jobs. Rural-urban migration are leading to rural labor shortages and higher rural labor wage rates, further discouraging labor-intensive rice farming.

Rise of $ :: Most commodities, including crude oil and grains are priced in U.S. dollars, but are purchased in the local currency. The world market price of rice in dollars is a poor indicator of profitability in the domestic market. Inflation in the market drops the price of rice but if the price doubles the domestic market shows a relatively no rise in price over the past few decades.

Lower prices do not necessarily mean lower profitability. The main factor driving the long-term decline in agricultural prices is technological progress that contributes to a drop in the unit cost of production.

Crude price :: Crude price will continue to rise in future. Rise in crude price will lead to rise in cost of fertilizers and insecticides needed to harvest the ‘Green revolution’ rice verities causing the increase of expenditure of the farmer. 

Insecticides and fertilizers :: Reoccurring pest outbreaks. - Many pests that caused major problems for rice intensification programs in the 1970s and 1980s have returned as major threats to production, primarily due to breakdowns in crop resistance and the excessive use of broad-spectrum, long-residual insecticides that disrupt natural pest control mechanisms.

Urban food habits :: At high levels of income, rice becomes an inferior commodity, and consumers prefer diverse foods with more protein and vitamins, such as vegetables, bread, fish and meat. Growing urbanization that accompanies economic growth leads to changes in food habits and the practice of eating away from home, which further reduces per capita rice consumption.

Rise in retail price of rice and its effects :: Rice retail food prices have increased due to such reasons as increasing food demand, high crop prices, increasing labor cost(excluding labor at rice field) and energy costs. These effects are not likely to stop, and the same increases will be experienced in future. A rise in the price of rice is equivalent to a drop in real income for the majority of the poor who are net consumers of rice. Higher prices increase the number of poor people and push people deeper into poverty and hunger, forcing them to sacrifice essentials such as more nutritious food, health care, and children’s education—thus condemning future generations to a vicious poverty cycle. The rice price will continue to rise because of low yield growth and limited area expansion. Statistical analysis of these factors and other key trends suggests that prices will remain near their current levels for the medium term. The one possible countervailing factor is the long-term slowdown in yield growth that has occurred throughout. If yield growth continues to decelerate, and does so more quickly than population growth, per capita production will begin to decline, and this may cause rice prices to rise again.

Trade Import/Export:: India is not a major factor in determining world commodity prices at world market because they do not trade. Increasingly popular food in Africa, with imports into Africa accounting for almost one-third of the total world trade. Latest trend of agricultural investment is seen by Indian firms in African continent.

Rice farmers :: Despite the higher cultivation costs of modern rice varieties has left the farmer poorer over the 40 years. Spending on education or health care for their children is a luxury many rural poor cannot afford at all. This condemns one generation after another to a prison of poverty and debt reinforced by cost of farming on to the farmer. In turn, malnutrition perpetuates poverty as it directly reduces the productive ability of those afflicted. Lead to a reduction in rice area there as farmers switch to other high-value crops. The High wages elsewhere, small town boredom, changing mindset of rural population towards city facilities, some may say but so is the believe that farming is low status job unworthy of modern youth causing the youth to drift as hired workers provide the vast bulk of labor to the cities.

Bio- fuel ::  Rising marketing costs (the difference between farm value and what consumers spend on food) are accounting for an increasing share of retail food expenditures. Higher and more volatile energy prices are quickly being passed onto the consumer. At the same time, the share of retail food expenditures spent on farm commodities is declining. Global economic conditions may result in continued food inflation. Global crop stocks are at record lows due to crops being used for non-food purposes. The use of raw materials in the fast-growing bio-fuel industry for the production of the petroleum-substitute ethanol

Population :: World population has more than doubled since the 1950s. . It may increase another 3 billion before stabilizing in 2100. Population growth is outstripping production growth. Expanding global populations with rising incomes are also cutting into global food supplies. This growth in population and consumption could outpace the projected growth of agricultural production and maintain high food inflation unless agricultural productivity is boosted.

Real estate land grabbing :: Over the years little room for expansion of rice area. The possibility of increasing the rice area is almost exhausted in most Asian countries. In many areas, highly productive rice land has been lost to housing and industrial development. The rice area will remain at this level or decline in future because of scarcity and competition from other agricultural and non-agricultural uses such as industrialization and urbanization urbanization in spite of global rise in stocks of rice production will fails to keep pace with demand growth.

Receding waters of Himalayas Glaciers

Impact on Climate on  Himalayas

The Himalayas have a profound effect on the climate of the Indian subcontinent and the Tibetan plateau. It prevents frigid, dry Arctic winds from blowing south into the subcontinent, which keeps South Asia much warmer than corresponding temperate regions in the other continents. It also forms a barrier for the monsoon winds, keeping them from traveling northwards, and causing heavy rainfall in the Terai region. The Himalayas are also believed to play an important part in the formation of Central Asian deserts such as the Taklamakan and Gobi deserts.

The mountain ranges also prevent western winter disturbances from Iran from traveling further, resulting in snow in Kashmir and rainfall for parts of Punjab and northern India. Despite being a barrier to the cold northerly winter winds, the Brahmaputra valley receives part of the frigid winds, thus lowering the temperature in the northeast Indian states and Bangladesh. These winds also cause the North East monsoon during this season for these parts.

The weather phenomenon called Jet Stream affects our image of the highest peaks on earth. The strong stream of winds from the west, passes through Everest, creating a familiar plume of snow blowing from the summit that is visible from a great distance.

 The false-color image above shows the Gangotri Glacier, situated in the Uttarkashi District of Garhwal Himalaya. Currently 30.2 km long and between 0.5 and 2.5 km wide, Gangotri glacier is one of the largest in the Himalaya. Gangotri has been receding since 1780, although studies show its retreat quickened after 1971. (Please note that the blue contour lines drawn here to show the recession of the glacier’s terminus over time are approximate.) Over the last 25 years, Gangotri glacier has retreated more than 850 meters, with a recession of 76 meters from 1996 to 1999 alone.

Details from a panorama of the West Rongbuk Glacier and Mount Everest, from a 1921 photo (left) by Major E.O. Wheeler and from a 2008 photo (right) by David Breashears. The glacier, located at an elevation of 17,300 to 24,400 feet, has experienced an average vertical loss of 340 feet in the past century. (Wheeler photo courtesy of Royal Geographical Society.) (Major E.O. Wheeler/David Breashears)

The Main Rongbuk Glacier and the north face of Mount Everest, as photographed from Tibet in 1921 (left) by George L. Mallory and in 2007 (right) by David Breashears. Situated at an elevation of 16,600 to 21,200 feet, the glacier experienced an average vertical loss of 330 feet between 1921 and 2007. Mallory and his climbing partner, Andrew Irvine, disappeared high on the northern slopes of Everest in 1924 during an attempt to be the first to summit the mountain. (Mallory photo courtesy of Royal Geographical Society.) (George L. Mallory/David Breashears)

Perched at around 17,000 feet in Tibet, Breashears holds Mallory’s 1921 photograph, with the remnant section of the Main Rongbuk Glacier and the north face of Mount Everest in the background. (David Breashears)

The Jannu Glacier, in Nepal, as photographed in 1899 (left) by Italian mountaineer Vittorio Sella and in 2009 (right) by David Breashears. In 110 years, the glacier, located below 25,295-foot Mount Jannu in the Kangchenjunga region, has virtually disappeared. Sella (1859-1943) took part in many leading mountaineering expeditions and is considered one of history’s greatest mountain photographers. (Sella photo courtesy of Sella Foundation.) (Vittorio Sella/David Breashears)

 The Kyetrak Glacier, located on the northern slope of 26,906-foot Cho Oyu in Tibet, as photographed in 1921 (top) by Major E.O. Wheeler and in 2009 (bottom) by David Breashears. In the past 90 years, the glacier has retreated and melted so extensively that a lake has formed where once there was ice and snow. (Wheeler photo courtesy of Royal Geographical Society.) (Major E.O. Wheeler/David Breashears)

GlacierWorks(www.glacierworks.org Follow us on Twitter  on Facebook ) is a non-profit organization that uses art, science, and adventure to raise public awareness about the consequences of climate change in the Greater Himalaya. By comparing our modern high-resolution imagery with archival photographs taken over the past century, we seek to highlight glacial loss and the potential for a greatly diminished water supply throughout Asia. Founded in 2007 by mountaineer, photographer and filmmaker David Breashears, the GlacierWorks team has made ten expeditions to the Greater Himalaya. Retracing the steps of pioneering alpine photographers and explorers George Mallory and Vittorio Sella, among others, the team has captured new images that precisely match the earliest photographic records. Over the past four years, they have recorded losses and changes to glaciers that are inaccessible to all but the most skilled climbers.

David Breashears is a mountaineer, photographer, and filmmaker who has reached the summit of Mount Everest five times. He is executive director of the Glacier Research Imaging Project, a joint undertaking with the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations that compares contemporary photographs of glaciers in the Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau with photos taken over the last 110 years. (David Breashears)

The Himalayan range contains high altitude glaciers that supply water to many rivers in Asia. These rivers provide water to more than half of the world’s population. Many people in Asia are dependent on glacial melt water during dry season. Accelerated glacial melt questions the very perennial nature of many of the Himalayan flowing rivers. This is likely to have huge implications on those dependent on the resource affecting water availability for agricultural purposes. In Nepal and Bhutan, melting glaciers are filling glacial lakes beyond their capacities contributing to Galcial Lake Outburst Floods 

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 :: water relationship / INDIA

According to the Comprehensive Assessment, there are currently about 300 million hectares of irrigated land worldwide—double the area in 1960. About 80 million hectares (27%) of this irrigated land is used for rice production. Because rice receives more water than other crops, it uses some 39% of the world’s irrigation water.

One is based on maps of irrigation schemes (Siebert et al), which may include areas that could be, but may in fact not be, irrigated; the other is based on satellite data (Thenkabail etal). The relative strengths and weaknesses of these two sources are open to debate, but they have at least one limitation in common: they show only the presence or absence of irrigation, not how much water is currently available or will be in the future. This is important because the future of irrigation is uncertain in many areas.


Climatic Change its effect on rice cultivation in India


In India 51 percent area under rice cultivation is irrigated, and the rest 49 percent is rain-fed. 51% area area depends on the rivers but the risk of the melting glacial region in the future will have drastic effect the cultivation, Indian peninsula has a history of deep drought situation with an approximately a 31% probability chance. The decrease in ground water table is one major concern at present for agricultural in India. (will cover in the other section of the research)

The Himalayan range contains high altitude glaciers that supply water to many rivers in Asia. These rivers provide water to more than half of the world’s population. Many people in Asia are dependent on glacial melt water during dry season. 

Accelerated glacial melt questions the very perennial nature of many of the Himalayan flowing rivers. This is likely to have huge implications on those dependent on the resource affecting water availability for agricultural purposes. In Nepal and Bhutan, melting glaciers are filling glacial lakes beyond their capacities contributing to Galcial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs) (UNEP 2007).


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A recent study for the World Bank has shown that the volume of water resulting from glacial melt in Nepal makes up less than 5% of the flows of rivers leaving the country and contributing to the Ganges downstream.

"That is, about 95% or more of the river flow is the result of rain and melting seasonal snow," said report co-author Richard Armstrong, a glaciologist from the University of Colorado at Boulder, US.

If that is true, rivers downstream of the eastern Himalayas will hardly be affected, even if the glaciers recede or disappear.

However, would the other contributing factors to the rivers' flow, such as precipitation and snowfall, remain the same in the changing climate?

No, say scientists, but whether that will lead to rise or fall of rivers' levels - and by how much and when - are the questions still waiting to be answered.

Some scientists say increasing temperature has meant that glaciers don't get enough snowfall during winter and therefore river flow during summer is dwindling.

"We have seen the decline in the flow of the Indus, Chenab and Jhelum rivers," says Professor Mohammad Sultan Bhat of Kashmir University, who has conducted field studies with India's flood and irrigation department.

"We have recorded a decrease of 40% in the flow of Jhelum's tributary river… that is fed by the receding Kolahi glacier."

)

India accounts for the largest share (59%) of the total drought-prone rice area in Asia. Most of these drought-prone areas are rain fed. In India, major droughts in 1918, 1957-58, and 1965 resulted in famines during the 20th century (FAO 2001). The 1987 drought affected almost 60% of the total cropped area and 285 million people across India (Sinha 1999).

Minor famines of 1860,1866,1869 and 1874 and extremely severe famine of 1877 and 1878, 1889 famine then in1896,1897, 1900,1901, 1902 minor famine1906,1907,1908,1909, drought 1915 then 1919 famine,

India drought 1950, 1951, 1952, 1958, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967,1968 – 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1979, 1982, 1983, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988 - 1993, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002, In India, drought is a perennial phenomenon, recurring every few years. The country witnessed 40 droughts of varying intensity during 1876-2002. This translates into approximately a 31% probability of drought.