Essay On Rice Production

Rice has become the most important crop worldwide affecting one’s food security, livelihood, and country’s economy. In Asia, for instance, above two billion Asians are depending on rice and rice products as their main source of energy. Rice production is the world’s primary source of livelihood. Households from Africa, Asia, and America engage in rice production as their employment and source of income.

Like in any countries in the world, rice production also plays important roles in the Philippines. Rice accounts for at least 20 to 30 percent calorie intake of Filipinos; 32% of the country’s population are employed in rice production (FAO, 2013). It contributes 13 percent to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), 16 percent are given to the Gross Value Added (GVA) of agricultural sector, and 3.5 percent is contributed to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country (Gonzales, 1999). Thus, rice is not a food staple alone but also an economic commodity.

To be able to produce rice, water is considered to be the most critical resource due to its significant use in irrigation. Worldwide, 70% of water is used especially in rice cultivation (Van der Hoek et al., 2001 as cited in Rejesus et al., 2010). About 17 percent of the cropland in the world is irrigated wherein, 60 percent of it is located in

From the name itself, AWD is a practice where the rice field is not continuously submerged in water. Instead, it is intermittently dried during the growing stage of rice. It was first introduced by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in collaboration with the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) and National Irrigation Administration (NIA) to mitigate climate change effects (e.g. methane emissions) and cope with water scarcity (Rejesus et al.,