USA – Turtles pose problem for Arkansas rice farmers
Source: The Raw Story12/06/2011 – After facing a spring of harsh weather, rice farmers in Arkansas, the nation’s top rice-producing state, have a new worry — turtles.
Philippines – Rice watchdog defends PHL’s rice self-sufficiency goal
Source: GMA News14/06/2011 – A rice watchdog on Tuesday asserted that rice self-sufficiency “is neither obsolete nor unattainable” as it criticized a government think-tank’s report saying the Philippines can achieve food security without becoming self-sufficient in rice.
India – Rice merchants squeezing farmers
Source: Times of India12/06/2011 – With the Union government doing nothing to lift ban on rice export, the paddy farmers of Bhandara and Gondia districts are being compelled to sell their produce at the lowest ever rate. The situation is thus that the farmers had to sell their produce even below the support price fixed by…
Thailand – Thailand to export 9 to 10 million tonnes of rice this year
Source: Thailand Business News11/06/2011 – Thailand is expected to export 9-9.5 million tonnes of rice this year, with the quantity possibly reaching 10 million tonnes at more than Bt170 billion in value.
India – Production of fine rice low in State
Source: The Assam Tribune11/06/2011 – Despite there being a spurt in rice production in the recent years, the State is still importing rice from other States of the country.
Philippines – Factbox: Building a better rice plant
Source: ABS-CBN News11/06/2011 – In the crop world, corn is a Ferrari, rice is a VW Beetle. For decades, scientists have been tweaking rice to achieve small increases in yield every year. But over the past decade or so, those increases have reached a plateau while demand for rice keeps growing.
USA – Wild rice in danger
Source: The Circle10/06/2011 – Proposed sulfide limit increases in Minnesota’s lakes would endanger natural wild rice growth.
USA – Crop weather Mayhem delays U.S. corn, rice planting as prices extend gains
Source: Bloomberg09/06/2011 – When the overflowing Mississippi River breached Arkansas’s levees and flooded Michael Oxner’s farm in May, the waters didn’t just wipe out his hopes of planting 1,400 acres of rice. It destroyed last year’s crop, too. Water inundated the bins that held the rice he’d harvested in 2010, ruining 25,000 bushels and leaving a fermented…
Indonesia – Ageing farmers threaten indonesian food security
Source: Reuters10/06/2011 – Ngadiyo, a farmer in Indonesia’s West Java, worries that there won’t be anyone to grow rice once he retires. His son and two daughters moved to Jakarta, the capital, several years ago, lured — like many others — by more stable jobs and hopes of a more modern life as the nation’s economy grows. They…
Early agricultural piracy informs the domestication of rice
Source: LabSpaces10/06/2011 – The origins of rice have been cast in a new light by research publishing in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics on June 9, 2011. By reconciling two theories, the authors show that the domestication of rice occurred at least twice independently but with extensive “borrowing” between the two subspecies.