MALNUTRITION: The Rats Have It

 Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Jan 18, 2011 (IPS) - While floods and droughts are often highlighted in the media for devastating the world’s rice production, a lesser-known culprit has been able to scurry away without being fingered for causing damage - rats.
The rodents reportedly devour "millions of tons of rice each year" in pre- harvest losses across Asia.
"Rats are the number one pre-harvest pests of rice in Indonesia and the third most important pest in Vietnam rice fields," Grant Singleton, a rodent expert at the Manila-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), told IPS.
With an eye toward saving more rice for the hungry in the region, international researchers are training farmers in Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam to combat this regular destroyer of the grain. Agriculture experts are viewing the eco-friendly rodent management message now taking root in the smallholder paddy fields in Southeast Asia as an efficient and safe alternative to the previously common use of toxic chemicals, such as rodenticides.
"This is the first time that ecologically-based rodent management has been promoted since the introduction of chemicals to kill rodents in the 1950s," said Singleton. "We now have a good understanding of when, where and how to conduct control of the main rodent species in two of the region’s largest rice producers.
Close to 200,000 rice farmers in Indonesia and Vietnam are part of an on- going campaign to arm farmers with environmentally friendly methods to save their crop from the rodents.
According to IRRI, pre-harvest losses of Asia’s staple have ranged from five percent of the grain in Malaysia to as much as 17 percent in Indonesia. A loss of six percent in Asia "amounts to enough rice to feed 225 million people - roughly the population of Indonesia - for 12 months," it adds.
The drive to combat the rodents comes in the wake of a challenge faced by agriculture research centres in the region to produce sufficient grain to feed the nearly 570 million people who are undernourished in the Asia-Pacific region.
Asia accounts for 90 percent of the rice produced globally, which topped 679.9 million tonnes for the year in un-milled paddy, according to recent U.N. figures.
The region’s major rice producers - home to the 250 million rice farms across the continent - are China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines and Burma (or Myanmar).
The new IRRI-led effort, places greater emphasis on community cooperation and management - including the simple message that farmers plant their crops within two weeks of each other - is already winning praise among farmers who have embraced this green solution.
"I now know how to manage rats better, working with my community so there are fewer in our fields and the rat damage is less," says Esmeraldo Joson Jr, a Filipino farmer, following his shift away from rodenticides, in an IRRI media release.
This is not the only attempt in the region to stop rats from depriving people from their staple diet.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has been helping farming communities in East Timor and Cambodia to save their harvested rice by storing it in small metal silos, considered more reliable and rat-proof than the traditional baskets and clay pots farmers have used for ages.
"These are small weapons against post-harvest losses," says Rosa Rolle, senior agro-industry and post harvest officer at the FAO’s Asia-Pacific regional office in Bangkok. "They offer long term solutions and are not costly to protect rice against rats and mice."
The twin efforts to combat the trail of grain losses caused by rats have gathered momentum following the global food crisis in 2008, when prices of grain rose to alarming levels and triggered concerns about millions affected by loss of staple meals.
"After the 2008 food crisis, saving rice from post-harvest losses are getting increased attention from all the stakeholders," says Subash Dasgupta, senior plant production officer at the FAO’s regional office.
Another spark to target rodents stemmed from the fears of famine that have spread through parts of northeast India, Bangladesh, Burma and Laos since the end of 2006, when a plague of rats ravaged rice in the fields and grains that had been stored.
"The rats were terrible. There was nothing the farmers could do," says Cheery Zahau, a human rights activist from Burma’s Chin ethnic minority who faced the brunt of the devastation from late 2006 through 2008.
Chin families normally eat two meals a day, but during the explosion of the rat population, they were reduced to eating only one meal, she told IPS. "The health consequences of that food crisis were very serious."
The explosion of the rat population was predicted though, coming once in nearly 50 years, when a local bamboo species starts flowering. The rats are drawn to its fruit and then multiply rapidly due to a hormonal change after eating the protein-rich fruits.
The rats ravaged all the grain in their path, prompting some farmers in the mountainous Chin State close to India and Bangladesh to stop growing rice in 2008. "They felt it was futile," says Cheery. "They were defeated by the rats."
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