A groundbreaking scientific congress that goes beyond science

September 12, 2023By Bas Bouman

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A groundbreaking scientific congress that goes beyond science
Bas Bouman
Research Director - Sustainable Impact through Rice-based Systems
International Rice Research Institute

The series of International Rice Congresses (IRC) is the world’s largest gathering of rice scientists, policymakers, industry players, and practitioners in the global rice sector. Organized once every four years, previous editions of the IRC were held in Beijing (2002), New Delhi (2006), Hanoi (2010), Bangkok (2014), and Singapore (2018).
After nearly three years of global lockdown, when practically all face-to-face events have been postponed, canceled, or held on virtual platforms, we are now holding the 6^th IRC on 16-19 October in Manila, Philippines.
It will be organized as a ‘live’ event in a post-pandemic world with plenary and breakout sessions, a trade show and exhibition, contributed events, and many opportunities for face-to-face meetings, creative interaction, and networking.

Why now is the perfect time to attend IRC2023
This major event couldn’t have come at a better time. Global agriculture faces tremendous challenges to meet a growing population’s food, nutrition, and health demands while doing so under increasing pressure from declining resources (such as water, energy, and labor), climate change, and the need for a clean environment.
Rice is the staple food for some four billion people worldwide and it will remain one of the world’s most important food crops in the coming decades. About 900 million of the world’s poor depend on rice as producers or consumers. Of these, some 400 million poor and undernourished people are engaged in growing rice. Moreover, with increasing concerns over health and nutrition, we urgently need to improve the diversity and nutritional quality of rice-based diets.
At the same time, rice will have to be produced, processed, and marketed in more sustainable and environment-friendly ways, despite the diminishing resources (land, water, labor, and energy) and the problems brought by climate change.
With a still rapidly urbanizing world, where megacities will house tens of millions of people, rural economies and landscapes are transforming, posing new challenges to the complex interactions between mega-cities and their rural hinterlands.
Adaptation to, and mitigation of, climate change may well be the single biggest challenge facing the world’s rice sector – now and in the coming decades. Already, climate change-induced events such as severe droughts and flooding are significantly reducing volumes of rice available for export in an unpredictable manner, prompting exporting countries to announce restrictions on exports.
Such announcements send tremors through the global rice market, prompting spikes in international and domestic rice prices with all the negative consequences for the millions of poor people who depend on rice for their daily diets. Export restrictions have the potential to unravel the food security of countries that rely heavily on rice imports to meet their domestic demands for this most important staple.
The world is in urgent need of a major systems transformation in the way food is produced, marketed, and consumed, and the rice sector - with its enormous footprint in terms of resource use and provider of staple food to roughly four billion people – can make a major positive contribution.

Using cutting-edge science and technologies to create game-changing impacts
Hence, IRC2023 comes at a crucial moment in time to help align major players in the global rice sector toward this system transformation. To address these complex challenges, the full power of science needs to be mobilized and put in the service of developing novel solutions and interventions across the whole rice value chain.
At IRC2023, we expect to see major scientific advances being presented and discussed in the fields of novel genetic approaches to breeding such as gene editing and speed breeding, genomics (and other –omics), microbiome research, soil health, and viable and acceptable options for reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Also, breakthroughs will be presented on novel and futuristic technologies such as digital and precision farming, Big Data, artificial intelligence and machine learning, nanotechnologies, novel remote sensing tools, and drones – all of which hold the potential to offer new and never-before contemplated solutions.

Going above and beyond the realm of science
Although it is a scientific conference at its core, IRC2023 goes far beyond the realm of science.
Across the globe – but especially in Asia - rice receives considerable attention from policymakers given its socio-economic and cultural importance. In most cases, pricing policies have struggled with the price dilemma and have swung between high farm gate prices that support producers or low retail prices that favor consumers.
In most Asian countries, trade and market policies have evolved according to the competitiveness of the rice sector in world markets, with substantial border restrictions in net importing countries and more free trade and aggressive stances in high-value market segments in exporting countries.
What is common to all governments of rice-growing countries is that they have heavily invested in the rice sector to try to shield it from excessive price fluctuations. Rice sector modernization programs—including easier access to input and output markets, knowledge, and innovations—are key features of most policy interventions.
However, these policies have also led to a form of rice involution in some cases. Opportunities to accelerate necessary crop diversification as well as promote alternative sources of income in the rural sector have often been missed.
There is a general recognition that public support for the rice sector needs to be revisited with a view to improving public spending effectiveness and efficiency. Therefore, the IRC doesn’t stop at science.
The Congress also brings together decision-makers from governments and the private and public sectors to formulate evidence-based solutions to some of the biggest challenges faced by the rice-based food system. It is an important venue where the participation of industry, government, and nongovernmental players is sought and weighs as much as the science component. It is through this historic and holistic combination of science and enabling policies, experimental data, practical field applications, and investors and innovators that we aim to formulate evidence-based solutions to some of the biggest challenges of the global rice sector.