BY ANTHONY IAN CRUZ

MICROSOFT founder Bill Gates announced yesterday a grant of $19.9 million to the International Rice Research Institute in Los Baños, Laguna to help place improved rice varieties and related technology in the hands of 400,000 small farmers in Asia and Africa.

With the grant, farmer-beneficiaries are expected to achieve a 50 percent increase in their yields within the next 10 years, according to IRRI.

"If we are serious about ending extreme hunger and poverty around the world, we must be serious about transforming agriculture for small farmers – most of whom are women," Gates said.

"These investments – from improving the quality of seeds to developing healthier soil, to creating new markets – will pay off not only in children fed and lives saved. They can have a dramatic impact on poverty reduction as families generate additional income and improve their lives," Gates added.

IRRI said the funding would be used to harness major scientific advances and address some of the biggest unsolved problems in agriculture.

The grant to IRRI is part of a total package of $306 million that nearly doubles the Bill and Mellisa Gates Foundation’s investments in agriculture since 2006.

According to IRRI researchers, rice remains a food staple for 2.4 billion people and provides more than 20 percent of their daily calorie intake, and up to 70 percent for the poorest of the poor.

"In order to meet the projected global demand for rice production in the 21st century, the world’s annual rice production must increase by nearly 70 percent – from 520 million tons today to nearly 880 million tons in 2025," the researchers said.

IRRI said it would target the poorest rice farmers in Africa and Asia, who have little or no access to irrigation and who are totally reliant on sufficient, timely rains. These farmers are regularly exposed to drought, flooding, or salinity – conditions that reduce yields, harm livelihoods, and foster hunger and malnutrition.

IRRI director general Robert Zeigler said with climate change threatening to worsen the frequency and severity of these problems, the need for insurance in the form of stress-tolerant crops is growing ever urgent.

"Scientists have been confounded by the challenges of stress tolerance for decades," said Zeigler. "But the rice-science community in general and IRRI in particular have recently taken significant steps forward through precision breeding to develop stress-tolerant varieties. As a world-class scientific facility with links throughout the rice-consuming world, we are uniquely positioned to produce crop varieties that can, and have, and will, benefit the poor."

Zeigler said other major donors have signaled their confidence in IRRI’s research, including the Japan government ($4.7 million for flood tolerance in Southeast Asia), Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development with the Eiselen Foundation ($1.45 million or salinity tolerance), and the International Fund for Agricultural Development with the Africa Rice Center ($1.5 million for sub-Saharan Africa).