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World rice markets are likely to remain tight in 2009
despite an expected record harvest after key producers clamped down
on exports, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) said on
Wednesday.
Export prices of one of the
world’s most important grains almost tripled between last November
and May, triggering riots in more than a dozen countries, before
softening to still historically high levels of more than $700 a ton.
“The 2008 to 2009 rice market
is likely to remain tight even with projected record global
production of 432 million tons, a 1-percent increase over last
year’s 428 million tons,” the institute based in Laguna province
south of Manila said in its quarterly publication Rice Today.
The projected increase in output
arises from an extra one million hectares (2.2 million acres)
planted with rice, to a total 155.3 million hectares, with India
accounting for more than half of the total increase, it added.
After reaching a record low of 73
million tons in 2004 to 2005, global rice stocks have been steadily
rising and are projected to reach 82 million tons in 2008 to 2009,
compared with 78.5 million tons in the previous harvest.
But “prices are likely to
remain high partly in response to export restrictions imposed by key
rice-producing countries,” IRRI said.
Stocks in the United States, one
of the few countries to resist imposing trade barriers during the
recent crisis, “are projected to decline further, further
destabilizing the market in the coming months,” it added.
The nonprofit research institute
said consumption was expected to remain strong “because of
substitution away from more expensive food such as fruits,
vegetables and livestock products.”
It projected global consumption
would rise around 1 percent to 426 million tons in 2008 to 2009.
“Increasing rice production
through area expansion is also unlikely in most parts of the world
because of water scarcity and competition for land from nonagricultural
uses such as industrialization and urbanization,” the institute
said.
With rice areas close to a
historic high, “it would be prudent to assume that world rice area
will remain or even fall below this range in the next 10 to 15
years.”
The institute repeated its call
for increased investment in agriculture to boost rice-yield growth,
which has dropped to less than 1 percent, compared with 2 percent to
3 percent during the technological breakthroughs of the Green
Revolution between 1967 and 1990.
It said the world would need an
extra 59 million tons of milled rice by 2020 above the 2007
consumption of 422 million tons.
--AFP
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