Rice is the third most produced agricultural product on this planet, after sugarcane and maize (maize), which have a big selection of non-consumer uses.
Using 2019 production data from the UN’s FAOSTAT and USDA, this map illustrates the ten largest rice-producing countries on this planet.
China (No. 1) and India (No. 2) top the list with combined production of 389 million tonnes, greater than half of worldwide production.
They are well ahead of third- and fourth-placed countries Indonesia and Bangladesh, which each generated about 54.6 million tonnes. With the exception of Brazil (#10), just about all top producers are based in Asia.
INTERESTING FACT More than half of the world’s population relies on crops as their important source of food. Rice is a key staple food in much of Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Caribbean and is assumed to offer greater than one-fifth of the calories consumed by people all over the world.
India, Thailand, Pakistan and Vietnam were the highest net exporters of rice in 2019, contributing almost $16 billion value of rice. For example, Iran, China, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines eat greater than they produce and depend on imports to satisfy their needs.
And not the whole lot survives the journey from plant to plate. An estimated 8-26% of rice is wasted as a result of post-harvest problems and insufficient infrastructure in developing countries.
Rice will proceed to be a crucial source of calories all over the world because the world’s population grows, and it would be interesting to see how this role changes as our diets change.
Rice cultivation data from space
As a result, rice is the important source of income for Asian farmers. On the opposite hand, extreme weather conditions plague the complete region. Floods, typhoons and droughts are all too common disasters that destroy entire crops.
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, SwissRe, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), sarmap SA and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) are engaging in a rice crop monitoring program to higher estimate yields.
Since 2013, this public-private collaboration has been helping rice farmers and governments in Southeast Asia and India take appropriate countermeasures to deal with impending harvest losses.
“RIICE” stands for Remote Sensing-Based Information and Insurance for Crops in Emerging Economies, which has collected detailed data from over 15 million hectares of rice farmland within the Philippines, Cambodia, India, Thailand and Vietnam. The data is generated by SAR satellites, which use electromagnetic waves to scan the Earth’s surface.
The technology is powerful enough to penetrate dense clouds, allowing monitoring of rice fields throughout the monsoon season, which is the important rice growing season.
Authorities are capable of take proactive measures to stop crop losses early through real-time monitoring and harvest forecasts. Support might be provided long before harvest failure – for instance as a result of storm-damaged seedlings.
As happened in Tamil Nadu within the federal state of India in November 2015, when vast regions were deluged by weeks of heavy rainfall. More than 300 people died because of this of the flood, which destroyed all rice seeds and, consequently, the lives of 400 rice farmers.
Government officials were capable of assess the extent of the damage based on satellite data just days after the rains began, enabling them to offer rice farmers with 50 tons of rice seeds and 30,000 seedlings in order that they could proceed farming immediately after the rains stopped.
Source: Visual Capitalist, giz.de
