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Rice R&D confab to highlight poverty and malnutrition

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Manila, The Philippines
March 7, 2008

Source: PhilRice

The 21st National Rice Research and Development (R&D) Conference is set next week March 11-13 at the PhilRice Central Experiment Station in Maligaya, Science City of Muñoz, Nueva Ecija. This year’s conference theme is “Addressing poverty and malnutrition through rice R&D.”

The three-day event held annually by PhilRice will bring together updates and developments on rice R&D conducted by the rice R&D network members nationwide. More than 500 rice scientists, R&D workers from agencies under the Department of Agriculture, state universities and colleges, local government units, non-government and people’s organizations, and farmer-leaders are expected to attend the scientific meeting.

This year’s theme will focus on the technologies and strategies that enhance productivity and sustainability of the rice industry. It will also highlight the models being used to efficiently promote new technologies for better adoption.

During the conference, PhilRice’s economic impact on its stakeholders and to the country as a whole will also be presented.

PhilRice relentlessly strives to live up to the expectations of the Filipino farmers. Many accounts say that PhilRice has revolutionized the Philippine farming systems and has contributed to the country’s development in general especially in the agriculture sector. With the country’s gruesome poverty and malnutrition situation, PhilRice aligns its efforts to conceptualizing and implementing more comprehensive programs that would answer these pressing issues.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) noted that protein-energy malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies remain the leading nutritional problems in the Philippines. In addition, FAO confirmed that about 12 million Filipinos are underweight while about 28 million are unable to buy food to meet their nutritional requirements and other basic needs. The Social Weather Stations’ (SWS) December 2007 report noted that about 2.9M Filipino families suffered from involuntary hunger (no food to eat) for the last three months.

To address this, recent PhilRice researches are geared toward the development of locally adapted technologies that will provide consumers with higher yield and more nutritional values. These include breeding of varieties that are vitamin-enriched and resistant to major diseases.

In addition, the conference will also showcase research presentations on rice technology generation and promotion, scientific poster viewing, launching of new knowledge products, and exhibit of rice technologies.

Farmers’ Field Days, which will showcase the experiments on the 100-hectare experimental farm of PhilRice, will be held on the first two days (March 11-12) of the event. PhilRice's Technology Management and Services Division is expecting more than 2,000 farmers who will witness the PhilRice-generated technologies on rice and rice-based farming systems.

“Technologies generated from rice R&D so far address poverty and malnutrition. Rice R&D can contribute to the improvement of the possible productivity and sustainability options that farmers can employ in alleviating their poverty conditions,” says PhilRice Executive Director Leocadio S. Sebastian.

“We need to enhance the transfer of results of R&D whether it be knowledge or technologies so that farmers can benefit from them,” Dr. Sebastian adds.

With the members of the National Rice R&D Network during the conference, PhilRice hopes to identify concrete pathways that will unshackle policy and institutional bottlenecks and push the full potentials of rice R&D to address poverty among rice farmers.

 

 

 

 

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