With India importing rice for the first time in over two decades this year, Thailand and other rice producing and exporting countries in Asia are rethinking food security, as experts say further output growth has to come from technology rather than lands that have already become sparse.

Given the scenario where the world's third largest rice exporting country India has gone to the international market for importing the staple to offset an expected production shortfall owing to the driest monsoon in four decades, Thailand last month announced an ambitious 50 billion US dollars stimulus package 'Strong Thailand', setting aside almost a quarter of the amount for boosting its agriculture by 2012.

Top agriculture officials of Thailand, the world's number one rice exporting country, revealed the country's plan for securing food not only for the kingdom but also for other countries of the world, to a gathering of jour-

nalists from different countries of the Asia-Pacific region in Bangkokover theweekend.

The media workshop was organised by Syngenta, a multinational also a world leader in the business of crop protection. The event was also attended by agricultural experts, industry leaders, host country officials, and representatives from the Philippines based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).

Apichart Jongsakul, secretary general of the Office of Agricultural Economics under the Thai Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, told the workshop that his government will pump in a huge amount of money over the next three years through the 'StrongThailand' stimulus package to turn die kingdom into the 'Kitchen of the World'.

Thailand has been the world's top rice exporting country since 1970 widi its export volume hitting 10 million metric tons (MT) last year, accounting for over 33 percent of the year's total 29.6 million MT global rice trade.

Referring to the moratorium that Thailand had slapped on large scale field trials of genetically modified rice, Apichart said biotechnology holds the key to the future growth potentials for crops including rice, and his country is now allowing breeders to experiment on biotech-derived crops under controlled greenhouse environment.

Identifying diversion of crops for fuel production as one of the key factors behind food prices hitting all time high in 2008, Apichart informed the audience about the Thai government's policy of not expanding the acreage of cassava and sugarcane for fuel generation purposes, while increasing only the acreage of oil palm for it, using only otherwise fallow lands.

A presentation made by Thai Rice Department's Deputy Director General Chairit Damrongkiat showed, India was the third largest exporter of rice last year behind Thailand and Vietnam, and exported 11.2 percent of the rice traded globally. Of the total global rice output of 445.6 million MT in 2008, India produced 99.1 million MT, second only to China that produced 134.3 million MT.

But within a year, India is now depending on other rice growing Asian countries to offset its shortfall resnlted from a delayed monsoon, a problem that Bangladesh also

suffered this year. But thanks to the timely policy decision of providing farmers with free power to pump water to the aman fields, which saved Bangladesh from any substantial crop loss.

The workshop took note of the Bangladesh situation, as the country is well poised with over a million metric ton of rice in stock But participants pointed out, with an increasing population and dwindling land resources, maintaining food security in Bangladesh as well as in other parts of Asia-Pacific is very crucial.

IRRI Media Relations Manager Sophie Clayton told the workshop, if rice producing countries want to keep pace with the rising number of rice consumers, the global rice output has to grow by 8 to 10 million MT per year.

Noting that the world population is increasing by an astounding rate of 2,20,000 a day, Martin Gibson, stewardship director of CropLife Asia, showed data elucidating how per capita share of arable land is shrinking.

Gibson said the world population was three billion in 1960 with each person having a share of 43 hectares of arable land, but as the population doubled by 2000 the per capita arable land share nosedived to 2.2 hectares, and by the most conservative projection it is likely to drop further to settle at only 1.8 hectares per person

in 2020 when 7.5 billion people will inhabit the earth. CropLife Asia is the Asian chapter of CropLife International, the global federation of plant science industries operating in 90 countries.

Syngenta's head of seed business for the Asia-Pacific region, Peter Pickering, and its country chief in Thailand, Parveen Kathuria, joined Gibson in the argument that the next big leap in rice output has to come from technology rather than from land resources. They laid emphasis on safe applications of agricultural biotechnology to ensure food security for an ever increasing global population.

Andrew Guthrie, who looks after Syngenta's crop protection business in the Asia-Pacific region, talked to The Daily Star sharing some of his thoughts. Guthrie said the technology is available, but farmers' must be able to access it He gave a recent example of how simple technologies help farmers enormously.

"In Bangladesh we supplied farmers with 'pani pipes', a plastic pipe with holes, that they tuck half into paddy fields. This eventually helps them understand water needs of the crop at various stages, for example: plantation, vegetation, and flowering, helping to cut irrigation cost," he said.