Word: zeigler
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...pork at your local market. You can always buy chicken. But rice has no good substitute in many Asian diets. In Mandarin, the word for rice is also the word for food. The Thai phrase "to eat" translates as "eat rice." "Rice isn't just another commodity," says Robert Zeigler, director general of the International Rice Research Institute in Manila. "In Asia, rice has cultural, social and, in many places, even a religious role, so it carries much more psychological weight." Indeed, Asian nations have reacted to the mere prospect of shortage with something close to hysteria. The Philippines government...
...Asia's rice crisis isn't likely to ease soon, and may get worse due to ominous long-term trends. The Rice Institute's Zeigler says rice production is not keeping pace with demand from surging Asian populations. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that worldwide rice consumption increased 0.9% last year, to nearly 424 million metric tons. Production increased less than 0.7%. "This has been coming on for several years now," Zeigler says, noting that global stocks are at their lowest point in decades. "We're consuming more than we've been producing. And as demand for rice continues...
...Zeigler blames a lack of investment in agriculture. In much of Asia, rice farming remains small-scale and inefficient. In Thailand, for example, average yields are less than half that of either Chinese or U.S. farms. At the same time, Asia's rapid urbanization has gobbled up fecund farmland. In Vietnam's Bac Ninh province, 12 miles (19 km) from downtown Hanoi, shimmering emerald paddy fields are now bisected by a four-lane highway. Not far from where rice farmer Nguyen Thi Lan stands weeding her fields in calf-deep muck, a Singapore-Vietnamese joint venture will soon build...
...zero-sum calculus: Vietnamese rice going to the Philippines is rice that is unavailable for Africa - or for the NGOs that feed the world's most vulnerable populations. "A lot of people don't realize that Africa's rice depends on Asia's surpluses," says the Rice Institute's Zeigler. In other words, Asia's grain is Africa's loss. With Asian nations scrambling to protect their own supplies, that could mean a much hungrier world...
...think stuff like this goes on in newsrooms all across the country," Zeigler says. "Every editor at the paper serves at the pleasure of the top editor...