Gates funding to help poor rice farmers

The grant to IRRI is part of a package totaling $306 million that nearly doubles the foundation’s investments in agriculture since the launch of its Agricultural Development initiative in mid-2006. The initiative, part of the foundation’s Global Development Program, is focused on a range of interventions across the entire agricultural value chain—from planting the highest quality seeds and improving farm management practices to bringing crops to market. The foundation believes that with strong partnerships and a redoubled commitment to agricultural development by donor- and developing-country governments, philanthropy, and the private sector, hundreds of millions of small farmers will be able to boost their yields and incomes and lift themselves out of hunger and poverty.

Rice is a food staple for 2.4 billion people and provides more than 20 percent of their daily calorie intake, and up to 70 percent for the poorest of the poor. In order to meet the projected global demand for rice production in the 21st century, the world’s annual rice production must increase by nearly 70 percent—from 520 million tons today to nearly 880 million tons in 2025. With nearly all irrigated rice-growing lands already in production, there is considerable potential to increase rice yields on rainfed lands.

IRRI’s project will target the poorest rice farmers in Africa and South Asia, who have little or no access to irrigation and who are totally reliant on sufficient, timely rains. These farmers are regularly exposed to drought, flooding, or salinity—conditions that reduce yields, harm livelihoods, and foster hunger and malnutrition. The development and distribution of new rice varieties tolerant of these environmental stresses can help avert hunger and malnutrition while improving livelihoods for millions of farmers and their families. With minimal access to irrigation and fertilizer, these farmers, who own small plots on marginal land, are inevitably most exposed—and most vulnerable—to poor soils, too much or too little rain, and environmental disasters.

IRRI Director General Robert S. Zeigler emphasizes that, with climate change threatening to worsen the frequency and severity of these problems, the need for insurance—in the form of stress-tolerant crops—is growing ever urgent.

“Scientists have been confounded by the challenges of stress tolerance for decades,” said Dr. Zeigler. “But the rice-science community in general and IRRI in particular have recently taken significant steps forward through precision breeding to develop stress-tolerant varieties. As a world-class scientific facility with links throughout the rice-consuming world, we are uniquely positioned to produce crop varieties that can—and have, and will—benefit the poor.”

A team co-led by IRRI scientists made a key breakthrough in 2006 with the discovery of a gene that allows rice to survive up to two weeks’ flooding with minimal yield loss. Varieties without this gene that are subjected to more than a few days’ flooding can be completely ruined.

The gene, known as Sub1, has been bred into several popular varieties—which in the absence of submergence behave exactly as the original variety—and these are already being tested in farmers’ fields in India and Bangladesh.