Annual report 1998-1999

RICE: HUNGER OR HOPE?

ABOLISHING POVERTY IN Asia
(Click here for pdf version)

Ronald P. Cantrell
Director General
International Rice Research Institute

With Asia’s stomach growling once again, rice is providing hope for dealing with the intertwined issues of poverty, hunger, soaring population, and environmental degradation.

Every day, 250,000 people join us on our already crowded globe. Most of these people are born into poverty and live their entire lives in poverty, with only death allowing them to escape.

According to the World Bank, 840 million people are going hungry today, two billion are malnourished, and 1.3 billion live in absolute poverty, existing on less than one dollar a day. For many, their lives are driven by a simple obsession: finding their next meal.

What most of us do not realize is that 70 percent of these poor, hungry people live in Asia. South Asia alone is home to half the developing world’s poor. Together, Bangladesh and eastern India have as many poor as all of sub-Saharan Africa.

While poverty and hunger in Ethiopia and Somalia have permanently scarred the world’s conscience, the longstanding suffering, hunger, and hopelessness of Asia’s 800 million desperately poor people are somehow routinely overlooked. Forgotten.

Why?

These victims are living testimonials to our failures: distorted priority setting, social irresponsibility, and lack of global thinking. To still have hunger in our world of abundance is not only unacceptable, it is unforgivable.

In Asia, where nearly all the world’s rice is grown and eaten, food means rice. Feeding the poor and helping them work their way out of poverty means starting with the basics: increasing rice production and improving access to rice.

In Asia, plentiful, affordable rice has been the key to maintaining social stability, promoting economic growth, and reducing poverty. As Asia becomes increasingly urban during the next quarter century, growing enough rice for the urban poor—and finding the land, water, and people to do this—will most likely become hot political issues.

We must ask ourselves two difficult questions: Can the world grow enough rice to feed Asia? And, do we have the means and determination to get this food to the people who need it and ensure that they have access to it?

The fear of famine and penury in Asia in the 1950s propelled concerned people to create the International Rice Research Institute in 1960. The driving force was simple: making the biggest pile of rice possible, as quickly as possible, to feed the ever-multiplying number of hungry mouths. This massive effort gave the world something it desperately needed: time. Time to build national rice research institutions, curb population growth, build more schools, and establish good health programs.

But have we used this time wisely to invest in a healthy world?

IRRI and its partners are once again faced with the daunting challenge of producing more rice, but in a much more complicated and fragile world. With success in keeping Asia fed has come a complacency that is difficult to shake.

The world simply assumes that Asia’s growling stomach can be quieted once again: Asian farmers can bring more land into cultivation, irrigate more fields, throw on more fertilizer, plant another crop, and, if more food is needed, it can be grown elsewhere and traded in the global economy. But the quick fixes for boosting production are long gone. In Asia, there is no more new land. Water is becoming scarce. Besides, who wants to be a poor rice farmer when the city at least offers hope for a better life for the next generation? And unlike maize and wheat, little of the rice crop (only 6.6 percent) is traded globally.

Each year, 50 million new people—mostly rice eaters—are added to Asia. To feed them, the world must increase its rice output between now and 2020 by one-third more than what is grown and eaten today. Unlike other industries, agriculture cannot simply build more "rice factories" and step up production.

Never before has agriculture faced such a stern challenge. Feeding Asia and providing opportunities for people to free themselves from the shackles of poverty are not impossible. This task requires political will, commitment, and sheer determination among many diverse partners. Agriculture—rice—must be the cornerstone of dealing with the inseparable issues of poverty, hunger, population growth, and environmental degradation.

Humanity’s greatest challenge may soon be just making it to the next harvest," Lester Brown of the World Watch Institute warned in 1995. But even if the world can produce enough, getting the food to those who need it is a huge challenge. As Nobel laureate Amartya Sen asserts, "An efficient food distribution system is as important as food self-sufficiency."

We can keep Asia—and the world—fed if we can correctly set our priorities. We can grow enough food and generate productive employment for the landless so they can buy their food from the market, while maintaining our natural resource base and preserving biodiversity. We can control population growth. We can provide every child with the right to be free from hunger, to be healthy, to go to school, and to eventually earn a decent living—and hope for a better tomorrow.

Human beings must have hope to survive. If people in food-deficit countries see no prospect for ever being free from poverty, they cannot help but lose all hope. And with hopelessness, society unravels.
Hunger or hope?

Our actions today will decide whether Asia’s tomorrow is filled with famine or food security, poverty or prosperity. Asia—and the world—cannot afford for IRRI and its partners to fail. The stakes are simply too high.

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