Smart Valleys? The Prize In The Rise Of The Price Of Rice

MANILA: Is the price of rice right? Is the value added from the farm gate to the dinner table received by the farmer right? When there is a rise in the price of rice, whose prize is it? The right answer may shock you. We'll get to that in a little while.

MY sent me early this morning, Monday, 19 December 2016, an email link to "Benin Rice" (AFP, 19 December 2016, Manila Times, manilatimes.net), and I've been reading that news. Benin is a democratic "presidential republic" in West Africa (Wikipedia). It was once a territory of France, long enough so that the official Benin language is French. Benin is tropical Sub-Saharan, highly dependent on subsistence agriculture. The largest religious denomination is Roman Catholic, followed by Islam, Vodun and Protestantism. Sounds familiar. Benin has 2 dry seasons (December to April and July to September), and 2 rainy seasons (April to July and September to November). Unique.

The Africa Rice Center, or AfricaRice, is headquartered in Cotonou, Benin's largest City and economic center – the capital is Porto-Novo, or New Port (Wikipedia). AfricaRice is one of the CGIAR international agricultural research centers, just like IRRI based in the Philippines and ICRISAT based in India. According to the AFP, AfricaRice engineered a system called Smart-Valleys (which I correct to Smart Valleys, without the hyphen), in which humid inland valleys, which are natural catchments for rainfall, are planted to rice. In the Philippines, we call the farm rainfed. The combined name of the system refers to the fact that the farmers use cheap and sustainable irrigation (that's Smart) and plant their rice in humid inland areas that are natural catchments for rain (that's Smart Valleys). The irrigation system is made up of earthen embankments, which are inexpensive, not concrete aquaducts, which are expensive.

Daniel Aboko, President of the Ouinhi cooperative, has been working with other farmers on 11 hectares of paddy fields, which AFP says "produces a bounty of food thanks to smart irrigation and a hardy strain of rice." Smart Valleys. How good is the system? AfricaRice researcher Sander Zwart says, "In 2013, there was a drought but the producers on the pilot sites had rice, while the others didn't." Smart move.

Aboko says, "Rice needs water, but not all the time. With the system, when the time comes to give water, we do so – if we shouldn't, we drain it away." Too much water is not smart. He also says, "What you give to the plant, it will give that back to you!" Giving back is smart, in living as well as in farming.

The AFP says the rice cultivar planted is also the product of smart plant breeding. It has genes from high-yielding Asian rices and an ancient African rice that is resistant to drought. The rice is called Nerica, which is short for New Rice for Africa. This was bred by AfricaRice, which gave the farmers their first seeds. Growers now buy more of Nerica seeds from the profits of their farms.

AfricaRice is now trialling Smart Valleys in the neighboring Republic of Togo in Western Africa. Africa or Asia, Smart Rice Valleys (my name) defeats drought by making use of rainwater, which may be the only source of irrigation in a locality. The AFP says, "No matter how little it rains, the new system allows farmers to produce crops."

The AFP report is about some Benin farmers doubling their rice yield to 6 tons per hectare within 4 years, where it used to be 3 tons. Isn't that a wow?! The report says, "They produce so much, in fact, that they (have) created an unusual problem for West Africa: a local glut."

Too much too soon? So, a low price of rice is the prize of success?

"The growers don't always manage to sell their produce because they have multiplied their yield in a short space of time," Felix Gbaguidi says. He is a director at the Ministry of Agriculture in Benin. "They hadn't always anticipated that aspect. But some organizations are being set up to look after processing the rice, and marketing."

"They hadn't always anticipated that aspect" of glut, of "over-production" resulting in an "over-supply" of rice. Enabled by the system called Smart Valleys, the farmers produced too much for the local market to absorb. That means nobody taught them not only to be good farmers but also to be good businessmen.

In the Philippines, I have yet to meet a good farmer who is also a good entrepreneur. There is always a surplus of rice during harvest time that the price goes down, not up, which is bad for the farmers but good for the merchants – which should not be the case!

"But some organizations are being set up to look after processing the rice, and marketing." That is not enough assurance, if you ask me. AfricaRice is not doing enough for the poor farmers in Benin. It is the same problem with rice farmers in the Philippines. What keeps the poor farmers poor? It's the system, stupe! It's the marketing system.

In fact, the solution is staring in the face of officials of AfricaRice and the Ministry of Agriculture in Benin: the cooperative. They don't have to set up "some organizations" when the multi-purpose coops can very well take care of the postharvest handling, processing and marketing for the sake of their members. In fact it can handle more; in my essay a year ago, "The Supercoop" (13 December 2015, Common Cause, blogspot.in), I listed 13 roles that the coop can do for its farmer members, from seeds to selling.

You have to help the poor farmers along the way from farm to fork. For instance, in-between harvests, poor farmers do not have the cash they need for the family. Now, they have found a smart solution in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, also in West Africa, where Benin is: it's called warrantage, or inventory credit system, found practicable by researchers of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, or ICRISAT. I learned that while I was still an international writing consultant when Filipino William Dar was still Director General of ICRISAT (see my essay, "IMODest Proposal. A Coop Revolution For Millions Of Poor Farmers," 28 September 2013, Common Cause, blogspot.in).

We learn from ICRISAT that under warrantage, the farmers can borrow money using as physical collateral their farm produce, which is then stored in a warehouse to await higher prices. When there is a rise in the price of rice, those stored grains are sold and the farmers, still owners of the precious food, will get the benefit of the market and not the merchants. That's Smart Marketing.

If the farmers have their usual way, they will sell their produce after harvest right away; that's instant gratification. I call that Short Marketing – the seller comes up short. The better system is warrantage; we can call it delayed gratification. Deferring instant cash to instant credit is the essence of warrantage – and the accompanying smart marketing is the essence of justice for the small farmers. When we take care of the small, we take care of hundreds of millions.

With Smart Valleys along with Smart Marketing, the prize in the rise of the price of rice will be awarded to who deserves it – the farmers. @

20 December 2016. Essay word count, excluding this line. 1234