AJAD Volume 20 Issue No. 2 December 2023

This article for AJAD presents the outlook for the world rice market as of early September 2023. It builds on the author's AJAD article from a year ago (https://doi.org/10.37801/ajad2022.19.2.p1) and on multiple articles in the East Asia Forum (https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2023/).

A year ago, the world was facing a severe food crisis. All the ingredients for significant shortages of food grains and vegetable oils were already boiling. An article in this journal at the time asked how to manage such a crisis (Timmer 2022). The answer was a series of steps designed to build confidence in the availability of supplies. Leadership was sought from Indonesia, chair of the G20 in 2022, and soon to be chair of ASEAN.

Indonesia had deep and long experience managing food crises facing its own economy. The hope was that this experience, plus President Joko Widodo’s diplomatic skills, could deliver a G20 consensus declaration at the Bali Summit in November 2022. If clear, substantive, and politically feasible steps were laid out in the declaration, the signatories could return home with some confidence that food prices would not spiral out of control. By stabilizing expectations about food prices, the need for panicked hoarding would be minimized. Somewhat higher prices were inevitable, but sharp spikes might be avoided.

Indonesia delivered (Editorial Board, ANU 2023a). World food markets remained relatively calm, rice prices actually declined for several months, and the world’s consumers breathed a bit easier. But the breathing space was short-lived. A combination of factors, especially the ramped-up attacks by Russia on Ukrainian food export infrastructure and the emergence of a vigorous El Niño in Asian rice bowls, has led to renewed concerns about an impending food crisis. This time the focus is on rice, rather than wheat, maize, and vegetable oils. But rice is increasingly the “food of the poor” in Asia and in Africa (Timmer 2013). A spike in rice prices will cause widespread hunger.

While the rural agriculture sector has traditionally been seen as backward relative to the urban industrial and services sectors, it is a potential “low-hanging fruit” ripe for a much-needed digital transformation for agricultural development. ASEAN has seen a U-turn in progress in addressing undernourishment as early as 2014–16, owing to multiple factors. These include climate change which impacts have led to a slowdown in agricultural yield growth amidst growing consumption requirements. Digital technologies are important in adapting the agriculture sector to climate change and rising demand for it to serve as a key sector for food security, income, trade, and employment in the region. However, adoption of digital technologies in agriculture within the region is still relatively nascent, partly because of a general lack of understanding of such technologies and how they contribute to agricultural development. Also lacking is a common framework for understanding and classifying the relevance of such technologies. Thus, this article proposes a common framework and narrates how it was developed and used in facilitating discussions that helped develop the 2021 ASEAN Guidelines on Promoting the Utilization of Digital Technologies for ASEAN Food and Agricultural Sector. We draw insights from our earlier work on the state of adoption of digital technologies in agriculture in the region and give an overview of key challenges and policy opportunities for scaling up.

Cognizant of the critical role the youth could play to sustain, develop, and build a sustainable, resilient, and inclusive agriculture industry, this study was conceptualized to establish a thorough understanding of the determinants of the Filipino youth’s intention to enroll in agricultural degree programs. This research assessed the younger generation’s agricultural learning experiences and explored their perception of the agriculture industry and evaluated how these different factors affected the shaping of their uptake of agricultural courses. The study utilized a case study approach in the local context of General Santos City, Philippines. The key findings reveal that while the youth report high exposure to agricultural information, these have not been translated into inherent knowhow; they attained only average scores in the assessment of their agricultural knowledge. They also have limited knowledge or familiarity with agricultural professions. In addition, the majority held positive economic, social, and personal perceptions toward the industry. However, they expressed reservations in considering if employment opportunities in the sector are profitable, if the society will hold them in high regard once they engage in the sector, and if they have the suitable skills and know-how to engage in the sector. Statistically, age, social participation, and personal perceptions were found positively significant (p<0.05), while economic perceptions were negatively significant (p<0.05) in determining the youth’s intention to enroll in agricultural programs and ultimately engage in agriculture. Thus, it is inferred that intervention programs, starting early in the curriculums of the youth, along with social programs that highlight capacity building, are necessary to pique their interest toward the industry and entice them to engage in its professions.

This empirical study reveals that agriculture in West Bengal, a major state in India, is nonviable as a primary source of occupation for most agricultural households who have been distressed to diversify to the nonfarm sector. However, the underdeveloped rural nonfarm sector does not leave enough economic space for the distressed farmers to have a smooth and remunerative transition from agricultural to nonagricultural employment. Therefore, most farmers end up clinging precariously to the agriculture sector while engaging in nonremunerative activities in the rural nonfarm sector for sustenance. This article identifies several statistically significant drivers of employment diversification through a logit model and revisited the age-old farm–size agricultural productivity debate in India to conclude that agricultural production is not scale-neutral. Therefore, to make agriculture viable and sustainable, the average operational landholdings need to increase through reverse tenancy and/or cooperative farming and through creating gainful employment opportunities in the rural nonfarm sector. This will help farm-dependent, semi-marginal, and marginal agricultural households to transition from agricultural to nonagricultural occupations.

The Jammu and Kashmir union territory is the largest producer of walnuts in India, and this crop provides an important source of livelihood for many farmers. This study aims to measure the economic efficiency and profitability of walnut orchards and explore constraints in cultivation in the Kashmir Valley. It relies on a crosssectional database collected from 240 walnut growers in the study area during the 2018/19 production period. Results reveal that walnut cultivation is highly labor-intensive as it incurs 80 percent of total production costs. The cost-benefit ratio of 1:5.35 per hectare indicates better economic prospects for the walnut industry in Kashmir Valley. The factors affecting productivity include farmyard manure, labor, chemical fertilizers, plant density, women participation, and information. The regression coefficients of production analysis, marginal value product, and marginal factor cost ratio indicate that there is ample scope for the expansion of walnut cultivation in the research area. However, walnut growers are confronted by several problems that tend to be location specific. The study calls for policy intervention concerning improved access to extension services, credit, and farmer training programs to boost walnut production in the study region.

Land provides physical space and is usually required for various sectoral developments needed to meet the needs of increasing population. Land is a finite natural resource; thus, conflict arises over land use and development.

The strategic location of the municipality of Pura in Tarlac province, Philippines within the urban beltway of Central Luzon and the recent opening of the Tarlac–Pangasinan–La Union Expressway provide Pura excellent opportunities for urban and industrial development. However, the precursor to this is agricultural land conversion (ALC), which can entail changes or reductions in the area of productive lands.

This paper assessed the degree of productivity of the agricultural lands in the study area that are predisposed to ALC using FAO’s land suitability framework and the revised Storie index for soil productivity. Soil survey and composite soil sampling at 20 cm depth in the selected 34 sampling points were done to analyze the relevant soil physical and chemical properties. Five soil mapping units (SMU) were grouped based on the soil surface texture. The results show that the SMUs are only marginally suitable (S3f) for producing rice and other crops due to their current low soil organic carbon content. However, these SMUs can be highly suitable (S1) for crop production with appropriate soil management. Using the Storie index, the entire tract of land of Pura has an index rating of 58 percent, which corresponds to a grade 3 soil suitable for planting a number of crops with expected good results. The results of the land suitability evaluation and soil productivity assessment further show that the land in the municipality of Pura is productive, and thus can benefit both agricultural production and ALC. As such, whichever spatial strategy or policy direction for ALC that the municipal government chooses to adopt, the municipality of Pura will lose productive land.

When something is institutionalized, it is established as a convention or norm of an organization or culture. Most professional disciplines have institutionalized and published their professional ethical expectations. Universities routinely include ethical study in the curriculum for medicine, law, business, and the environment. The agricultural science curriculum lacks consideration and study of the effects of agriculture’s ethical dilemmas on society. Moreover, agriculture, the essential human activity and the most widespread human interaction with the environment, needs a defined moral foundation. Ethics has not been institutionalized in US land-grant universities with agricultural colleges, 2 colleges of agriculture in other countries, agricultural professional organizations, or the agribusiness industry. That is not to say there are no professional ethical standards.

Examining agriculture’s ethical base and the reasons for it is an exercise in reason to find where the weight of reason rests (Rachels and Rachels 2007). Many assume agriculture has had an adequate ethical foundation. The assumption is not questioned. There has been too little investigation and too little critical thinking about the lack of and need for an explicit ethical foundation.