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HANOI: Global rice researchers have agreed to step up cooperation in an effort to lower food prices and lift tens of millions out of poverty, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) said Thursday.
The initiative was launched in Hanoi on Wednesday at a global conference of rice researchers, traders and policymakers.
Known as the Global Rice Science Partnership, it marks “for the first time ever, a single strategic and work plan for global rice research,” Manila-based IRRI said in a statement.
The initiative has the potential to contribute significantly to lowering food prices, which should lift about 72 million people out of poverty by 2020, said Robert Zeigler, the IRRI’s director general.
Implementing the five-year effort, worth nearly 600 million dollars, will require annual funding for rice research to rise from around 100 million dollars next year to 139 million dollars in 2015, IRRI said.
“We need to secure some additional funding to... step up the whole partnership effort,” Sophie Clayton, IRRI’s manager of public relations, told AFP.
A September report by IRRI and the US-based Asia Society said Asian countries need to increase sharply and better manage rice stocks, to improve food security in a region where 65 percent of the world’s hungry live.
Asia’s rice-producing areas are home to nearly 560 million extremely poor people, who live on less than 1.25 dollars a day. This is more than for any other crop, the report said, adding that about 90 percent of rice is grown in the region, on more than 200 million rice farms.
Rice is the staple food for more than three billion people, about half the world’s population. – AFP
