IN 2012, China’s overall grain output topped 589.57 million tons, maintaining an increase for nine consecutive years.

“A glance at the history of world grain development shows that, among the current six top grain producing countries, only India achieved a five-year-straight increase between 1966 and 1970 and the U.S. between 1975 and 1979. China’s nine-year-straight grain output increase hence sets a new world record,” chief economist of China’s Ministry of Agriculture Bi Meijia recently observed. That China, with less than seven percent of the world’s arable land, has kept all 1.3-plus billion of its citizens – accounting for 22 percent of the world population – fed constitutes a massive contribution to world food security.

The growth in China’s grain output owes much to the country’s progress in agricultural science and technology. As of 2012, R&D breakthroughs, notably in hybrid rice, had made a 54.5 percent contribution to agricultural development, surpassing that of all other factors, including land and capital.

Super Rice

Prominent agricultural scientist Yuan Longping has gained global acclaim for his contributions to rice R&D. Dr. M. S. Swaminathan, general director of the International Rice Research Institute and also former agriculture minister of India, is quoted as saying that Yuan, known as “father of hybrid rice,” is the pride of China and of the world by virtue of his achievements that are a blessing on humanity.

Yuan successfully developed the first hybrid rice varietal in 1975. The next year it was cultivated in 138,700 hectares of fields across the country. It achieved an average per hectare yield of more than six tons – double that of previous harvests.

In the 1980s, pressure wrought by swelling populations prompted Asian countries to carry out “super rice” R&D programs. Broadly speaking, super rice is a high-yield – usually 10 to 15 tons per hectare – strain of rice. Progress in the first decade was slow. China’s super rice R&D program, headed by Yuan, was initiated in 1996. By combining an ideal plant type with intersubspecific heterosis Yuan and his team successfully bred the country’s first super rice species. By 2012, China’s yield had reached an average 14.45 tons per hectare.

Today, China cultivates 83 species of super rice in fields that cover 6.7 or more million hectares, equivalent to one fourth of the country’s total rice planting area. It is a major propellant of China’s steadily growing rice yield.

Global Promotion

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Rice Research Institute promote hybrid rice, including super rice, throughout the world. China has extended significant support in this respect.

In 2006, China made a commitment to establish 10 agrotechnical demonstration centers in Africa. The Madagascar Hybrid Rice Demonstration Center is one of them. Mamy Andriantsoa, director of fisheries and halieutic resources of Madagascar’s Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, spoke glowingly of the cooperation program and of the skill of the Chinese technicians and experts involved in it. In 2008, China provided Madagascar with 56 tons of hybrid rice seeds. Two years later, Madagascar’s rice production had increased by around 6,000 tons.

“My first visit to China was with the intent of introducing China’s hybrid rice to Pakistan. I can’t remember how many times I’ve been to China since, but on one point I’m quite clear – that if I’d gone earlier more Pakistani farmers could have risen from poverty and changed their lives,” Shehzad Ali Malik, chief executive of Guard Agricultural Research & Services Private Limited, said.

Since 1999, the Guard Agri has promoted hybrid rice in Pakistan through cooperation with the Yuan Longping High-Tech Agriculture Co., Ltd. “In the past, the average per hectare rice output in Pakistan was 3.5 tons. Today it has risen to around 10 tons and in some regions to as high as 13 tons,” Malik said. “Our current accomplishments are thanks to the assiduous efforts of Chinese technicians and experts. I remember that in 2007 temperatures rose to 53oC in Lahore, and most local farmers chose to stay indoors. But Chinese technicians carried on their work in the rice fields despite the stultifying heat. I heartily admire and respect their industrious spirit.”

Today, Asian countries such as India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos, as well as the U.S. and countries in Africa and South America have all successfully introduced China’s hybrid rice to their agriculture.

Feeding the World

Global promotion of hybrid rice techniques has contributed significantly to world grain security. In the past 20-odd years, however, due to agriculturists’ pursuit of high yields, super rice cultivation has generated high requirements for water, fertilizers and pesticides. Currently, China’s grain production consumes 40 percent of the world’s agricultural chemicals and fertilizers, and its rice plantation uses 50 percent of the country’s freshwater resources. Present rice planting methods entail high input that both increases farmers’ burden and harms the environment. Since the late 20th century, however, China’s agriculturists have made headway towards the sustainable rice development goal of “lower input, more output and green farming.” The new green breeds of super rice they have cultivated require fewer agricultural chemicals and fertilizers, less irrigation and are more drought-resistant.

In 2008, China cooperated with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on cultivating and promoting green super rice. In 2009, Chinese scientists guided local farmers in planting new green species in experimental fields in eight sub-Saharan African countries, including Liberia, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda; in the four Southeast Asian countries of Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos and Vietnam; in four countries in South Asia including India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka; and in four Chinese provinces/autonomous regions, including Guangxi, Guizhou, Sichuan and Yunnan. This non-transgenic super rice manifested in these pilot fields its traits of being pest-resistant, drought-resistant and high-yield. Local farmers acclaimed it as the “best gift God ever bestowed.”

There are still more than one billion people around the world struggling to survive amid extreme indigence, and three fourths of people who do not have enough to eat live in rural areas of Asia and Africa. More and more countries express willingness to participate in international cooperation to promote green super rice, their common aims to end starvation and protect the environment.

Li Zhikang, chief scientist of the green super rice project and professor with the Institute of Crop Sciences under the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, has stated that China is willing to extend aid towards promoting cultivation of green super rice in famine-inflicted countries. “Impoverished farmers in underdeveloped countries can’t afford agricultural chemicals and fertilizers, so green super rice that saves water, is drought-resistant and requires fewer chemicals and fertilizers is exactly what they need,” Li said.

China invites agrotechnicians from underdeveloped countries to take part in its training courses, and meanwhile sends experts to such countries to give local farmers personal guidance on green super rice cultivation. It also helps them establish agricultural research centers that can improve their rice R&D ability and production capacity.

The green super rice project co-financed by the Chinese government and the Gates Foundation expects to enable at least 20 million farmers in resource-poor regions of Asia and Africa to shake off poverty within 10 years through raising their rice yield by 20 percent. It thus offers a feasible solution to the global food crisis.