for the rural population and their food
security. It is mainly cultivated by small
farmers in holdings of less than 1 hectare.
Rice is also a wage commodity for workers
in the cash crop or non-agricultural sectors. Rice is vital for the nutrition of much of the
population in Asia, as well as in Latin
America and the Caribbean and in Africa; it
is central to the food security of over half
the world population. Developing countries
account for 95% of the total production, with China and India alone responsible for nearly half of the world output. World production of rice has risen steadily
from about 200 million tonnes of paddy rice in 1960 to over 678 million tonnes in 2009.
The most productive farms for rice, in 2009,
were in China producing 6.59 tonnes per hectare. The three largest producers of rice in 2009 were China (197 million tonnes),
India (131 Mt), and Indonesia (64 Mt). At 44
million hectares, India had the largest farm
area under rice production in 2009. The rice
farm productivity in India were about 45%
of the rice farm productivity in China, and about 60% of the rice farm productivity in
Indonesia. If India could adopt the farming
knowledge and technology in use in China
and Indonesia, India could produce an
additional 100 million tonnes of rice, enough
staple food for about 400 million people every year, and US$50 billion in additional
annual income to its rice farmers (adjusted
to 2010 dollars and global rice prices per
tonne). In the 1990s, genetic studies took
place in many European laboratories to
increase rice production per hectare. Most of them were Dutch agricultural organizations
united by HNGAC. These studies were later
stopped due to lack of funding. In addition to the gap in farming system
technology and knowledge, many rice grain
producing countries have significant losses
post-harvest at the farm and because of
poor roads, inadequate storage
technologies, in efficient supply chains and farmer's in ability to bring the produce into
retail markets dominated by small
shopkeepers. A World Bank – FAO study
claims 8% to 26% of rice is lost in
developing nations, on average, every
year, because of post-harvest problems and poor infrastructure. Some sources claim the post-harvest losses to exceed 40%., [51][53] Not only do these losses reduce food
security in the world, the study claims that
farmers in developing countries such as
China, India and others lose approximately
US$ 89 billion of income in preventable post-
harvest farm losses, poor transport, the lack of proper storage and retail. One study
claims that if these post-harvest grain
losses could be eliminated with better
infrastructure and retail network, in India
alone enough food would be saved every
year to feed 70 to 100 million people.
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