Fortify PH Rice Production

Australian rice food company, SunRice Group, signed a private-public partnership with Vietnam to bring scientific and economic benefits across its whole rice supply chain.

This recent development also calls for the Philippines to explore ways to fortify rice production to keep up with the growing demand and lessen imports.

Since the 2000s, the Australian government through its Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, adapted policies and made a considerable effort towards improving farming. Thus, developing innovations for agricultural technologies and becoming one of the largest rice food suppliers and exporters.

In the past years, SunRice showed exemplary performance by exporting high-value specialty rice targeted to markets like Japan. This led to the partnership with Vietnam, the world’s third-largest rice producer to strengthen its rice production capabilities.

The four-year partnership will create table joint research by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), SunRice Group, University of Queensland, An Giang University, Can Tho University, and Cuu Long Rice Research Institute that will bring high-value markets to small rice farmers in Vietnam.

ACIAR, Australia’s specialist agricultural research-for-development agency, has been working closely with Vietnam’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development since 2018 to integrate Australia’s knowledge of rice production with Vietnam’s industry.

Both parties will bring in a total of $5 million to the project, with $2.4 million from SunRice, and the remaining $2.6 million from ACAIR.

The partnership project will support the protection of the Mekong Delta and enable Vietnam to adopt sustainable rice farming methods to adapt to climate change.

Meanwhile, despite progress in Philippine rice production, demand continues to outpace local supply, resulting in importation.

Another reason is the limiting laws to expand rice farm areas to which farmers are kept in bondage instead of profiting from their harvest.

To address this, we need to push the government and encourage other sectors to invest in all the necessary research and types of machinery to improve land productivity.

Source: Philstar