Food, Farms and Forests

Better Rice: Boosting Food Security, Profits without Increasing Yield

• Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station

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Arkansas could produce an estimated 1 to 3.5 million more servings of rice per year. That’s according to recent research analyzing rice quality in the state.

In this episode of Food, Farms and Forests, Dr. Lanier Nalley, interim department head and professor in the agricultural economics and agribusiness department, explains his research on the impacts of improving rice milling quality.

Dr. Nalley and Dr. Alvaro Durand-Morat conducted a study titled "Feeding More With The Same Output: How Enhanced Rice Quality Genetics Can Lead to Increased Food Security and Producer Profitability." 

This research explores how enhancing the genetic quality of rice can significantly increase the amount of rice available for human consumption without increasing the yield.

Nalley explains how improving rice quality can reduce the percentage of broken rice kernels during milling, which often end up as pet food or brewing ingredients rather than on people's plates. By ensuring more rice kernels remain whole, Arkansas could produce an estimated 1 to 3.5 million additional servings of rice per year, contributing to greater food security locally and globally.  
 
Nalley also discusses the collaborative efforts and hard work of the Arkansas Rice Breeding Program in achieving these results.
 

Read the Research: Feeding More With The Same Output: How Enhanced Rice Quality Genetics Can Lead to Increased Food Security and Producer Profitability 

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[00:00] Intro/Outro:

Welcome to the Arkansas Food, Farms and Forests Podcast — the podcast bringing you the latest on food, fiber and forestry research from the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, the research arm of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.

 

[00:17] Jenifer:

Welcome to Food, Farms and Forests. I'm Jenifer Fouch. Today, we are learning about research that explores how improving rice milling quality, therefore, rice quality can increase the amount of rice available for human consumption. Results showed Arkansas could produce an estimated 1 to 3.5 million more servings of rice. That's a lot of rice. And we'll explain these estimated results and how we got there. 
 
 In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Lanier Nalley, interim department head and a professor in the Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness department to better understand this research and its results. Dr. Nalley, thanks for being here with us.

 

[00:54] Lanier:

Yeah, thank you for having me.

 

[00:56] Jenifer:

So, you worked on this research with Dr. Alvaro Durand-Morat. And the study is titled: Feeding More with The Same Output. How Enhanced Rice Quality Genetics Can Lead to Increased Food Security and Producer Profitability. I mentioned a big number in the beginning, but it's not so easy. It's not so black and white. We are going to explore that gray area. Can you explain how we got there, how we got to those results? Can you give us an overview of the work and the theoretical rice production scenarios that you looked at?

 

[01:28] Lanier:

Yeah, I think importantly, we need to start at the foundation where rice is unique, from other field crops. And that quality really matters. So, most soybeans and corn, and wheats are processed in a form that you don't recognize when you eat. They're, they’re inputs. They're all staples around the world, but they're processed. Where rice is very unique because how it looks really matters to the people who eat it. 
 
 And to give a metaphor that I always used in graduate school, I shared a cubicle with a Japanese student, and we went for dinner one night and he told me the rice was terrible, and I said, it all tastes the same to me. And he laughed at me and said I didn't know anything. And then the next week we went and ate barbecue. And being from Georgia, I was complaining that it was beef barbecue and not pork barbecue. And he said it all tastes the same to me. And then I realized rice, for many communities around the world, it's not what it looks like … it is what it looks like, rather, as much as what it tastes like. 
 
 And so, the problem we have, globally, but specifically in the U.S. that we struggle with, is broken rice. So, rice that's grown and then when it mills it fractures at the mill. So, the appearance of the rice, because it's not a whole kernel, it's not homogeneous. And then different segments of that, our export markets view them differently. And that's become a big problem. 
 
 So given, you know, that I work on rice and Dr. Durand does, what we were kind of … the impetus of this whole study came around in 2010, where we had, at that time, was our largest rice crop ever in the state of Arkansas. It was also the hottest year we had experienced in the last hundred years. And without getting the physiology too much, rice likes heat, but too much heat can be detrimental for milling. So, it was almost like a fool's gold type of crop, where you looked at it and said, this is going to be great. And then when they took it to the mill, it broke. And then it was, this went from this is great to this is a huge problem because we export a substantial amount depending on the year, about 40% of our rice around the world. Many of the markets that we export to are very discerning about what the rice looks like. 
 
 So, in 2010, we had a glut of broken rice that we couldn't get rid of. And in rice, it's very … breeders have a hard job. As an economist, I look at a computer screen all day and write code. I would not want to be a rice breeder because it is so difficult because you're breeding for yield and quality simultaneously. And oftentimes, producers want yield. But if you don't have the quality and that rice breaks, it becomes very difficult on the back end to find a market. 
 
 So, the University of Arkansas’s rice breeding program has done an excellent job of breeding for quality, specifically compared to its competitors. And what Dr. Durand and I did is kind of a fictitious scenario. And we said, what if we took the rice quality that the University of Arkansas best variety had and put it in every single variety we grew in the state of Arkansas. What would that look like and what would the impacts of that be? 
 
 So, we ran these counterfactual scenarios, and that's important because 4 billion people around the world rely on rice as their staple crop, and 80% of undernourished people in the world rely on rice as their staple crop. So, what we do in Arkansas and what researchers and rice breeders do at the University of Arkansas and the Division of Agriculture affects a lot of people, and it affects, obviously, our producers and our stakeholders in Arkansas, where there is massive spillover effects for global food security. 
 
 And so, that was kind of the impetus Alvaro and I got together and said, well, what if we could put these great genetics the university has in all varieties, including our competitors? Like, taking what we're great at. We're great at many things, but I think our quality program is excellent. What if we could take those genes and insert them into every variety? What would the implications of that be? 
 
 And the important thing is, is that we're not increasing yield. So, output has not gone up at all. The only thing that has changed is the percentage of kernels that break. Because currently, when we have broken kernels, producers get roughly 60% of the value of a whole kernel. So, think about that. If you had, I mean, if you have two rice kernels and you got a dollar for one, hypothetically speaking, you get $0.60 for the other one because it's broken, right? That's a big problem. 
 
 And so, what we wanted to do is say, look, you know, what would happen to producers? Their revenue would go up; their yields wouldn't change at all. Their inputs wouldn't change a bit. So, there's no cost to production differences. Everything's the same except the percentage of those kernels that break when they go through the mill. So that was kind of how we started on this.

 

[06:18] Jenifer:

So, you're looking at all aspects of it essentially - how is it beneficial for the producer and then essentially for the consumer on the other side too?

 

[06:27] Lanier:

That's right. So, kind of in interest of full disclosure, I'm a production economist and I'm also a developmental economist. So, I have two jobs: enhancing profitability for producers in the state of Arkansas and making sure everyone in the world is fed. And this kind of project was the nexus of those two things, which is… I think working in the University of Arkansas is great because we have the freedom to explore things that benefit not only Arkansans, but take that past the benefit that they derive, and then go down the chain to see how those benefits affect people globally as well.

 

[07:00] Jenifer:

And how do you achieve that? Once you got to the problem and you got to that goal, how do you go about doing this research? What was the behind the scenes like to get to the results that you got to?

 

[07:12] Lanier:

Well, easy. My research career has had a high center of gravity of just surrounding myself with people smarter than I am. And so, I always feel like I'm an ideas person and I have to surround myself with people that are actually the modelers and the deep thinkers. 
 
 And so Dr. Durand, who's the L.C. Chair in our department, has a massive international trade, probably the largest model in the world, maybe outside of the International Rice Research Institute that looks at impacts and supply changes and follows a small yield change or a small broken percentage change in the state of Arkansas, and then follows that all the way to a plate in someone in Central America or in Mexico. By volume, by price, by everything. 
 
 So, we can shock that model with small changes and then get the macro level impacts not only on producers and consumers in the U.S., but consumers globally, which that was kind of the back end focus. Our first focus was: how would this affect profitability for Arkansas producers? But as importantly, as a humanitarian, which almost every farmer is in the state of Arkansas, how their good work is helping feed the global community?

 

[08:22] Jenifer:

And what were your key findings from your data analysis?

 

[08:26] Lanier:

Yeah. So, I think a couple of things. I think the first thing to keep in mind is that we're not changing the yield, right?  So, I think that's important when we think about feeding people or feeding more people as our global population grows, we always think that we have to yield more. So, I think the underlying current of this study is we don't need to increase the yield. We just need to capture more of that yield … because sometimes broken rice ... Now we can blend broken rice with whole rice. 
 
 So, typically the standard is about 15% of the rice kernels that we eat might be broken. Some countries have very strict thresholds. So, like Haiti our largest export market before the recent current events in Haiti, they require a maximum of 5% brokenness, which is crazy to think about because Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. But their requirements on rice quality are very, very strict. 
 
 And so, what we did was we essentially said, okay, let's take the … let's use two scenarios. First, we're going to hold yield constant across all assumptions. But we're going to increase the head rice yield, which is the percentage of kernels that are whole after milling versus those that are broken by 1%, which doesn't sound like a lot, but there are plant breeders who will spend their entire career doing that, right? So that's a yeoman's task. So, I don't mean to make it sound like it's easy because it's not. Then we said, let's, let's raise all varieties milling rates or head rice yield rates to Roy J, which was a popular variety released by the Division of Agriculture at the University of Arkansas. And that standard that milling percentage that Roy J had, we lifted everyone that was below that to that. Any variety that was already above it, we didn't touch. So, we just said, let's make that the floor, right?
 
 So importantly, yield did not change. And through that, especially at Roy J, we assume that the average consumer in the world - which they do eat 61.2kg of rice per year - if we could raise all varieties at the state of Arkansas based on historical plantings and historical yield, so not changing yield, we could feed 3.5 million more people through just an increase in head rice yield. 
 
 And that, when I say just an increase, it's not really increasing because the university already has those genetics and those genetics were a product of probably 20 years of hard work by our plant breeders and our plant physiologists. And I think that that number, 3.5 million people, I mean, that when you scale that out between 2004 and 2020, which the study was, that's 58, 57 million more people, we could have fed with the exact same yield. 
 
 And I think for us that was that was important because I think a lot of times people say we need to focus on yield, but what I'm arguing is the good work the university has done is man, quality matters a lot too. And we have these genetics, and a lot of rice companies focus on yield, yield, yield. But the problem is, you might yield a lot, but if your quality is bad we can't export it anywhere. And broken rice typically goes into things like pet food. It goes into things like brewing. You can make rice flour out of it. 
 
 But a lot of that, and I'm not just here to say that beer is not important because a lot of rice goes to beer, but, you know, as a developmental economist, I want that rice ending up in someone's belly. 
 
 And I think the really cool thing about this study was we didn't have to increase yield. And 58 more million people got fed because of this kind of increased genetics assuming that every variety in the state of Arkansas had the genetics that one variety University of Arkansas released did. 
 
 The other underlying current here is that we are losing a lot of export markets in South America because of quality, right. So, a lot of our competitors are focused on yield, and that's great. But if you can't export, it doesn't matter how much you produce if you can't sell it. And I think this this study that Dr. Durand and I did really highlighted the fact that, you know, focusing on quality like the university has done over my entire career here, now they've also focused on yield. I don't mean to undersell that value, but quality and the university’s commitment to quality is a big deal. 
 
 And if everyone else who has varieties, had the same quality we did, we could have a huge impact in fighting global food insecurity. Coupled with the fact that rice uses a lot of inputs, like rice uses a lot of water and the university is doing a fantastic job as we speak at trying to reduce the amount of inputs that rice uses. However, when we use all these inputs and we ended up with broken kernels and it ends up in my dog's food, that's the same inputs we would’ve used instead of ending up in some poor person's plate in Central or Latin America. 
 
 And so not only are you increasing the amount of people you feed, you're also decreasing the environmental impact by having more of that rice end up on someone's plate instead of ending up in dog food. And so for me, that's a huge story that's probably not told enough.

 

[13:41] Jenifer:

What has been the feedback you have received on this research, and where do you hope that it will go from here?

 

[13:49] Lanier:

I think the results that can be used in the future are probably feedback that plant breeders got here 20 years ago and have already been responding to, and that's why this paper shows the work that breeders at UofA have done is so, so good and so progressive and leads the way. 

I kind of wish that not so much feedback, but maybe more echoing sentiment from the study is - I wish our competitors would also look at the quality aspect and the industry embraced that as a way to efficiently increase the use of inputs. 

Now, again, remember, inputs don't change, but I'd much rather spend water and greenhouse gas emissions feeding people who are poor and hungry across the globe than feeding my dog, who I also love. But my dog can eat things like corn and other ingredients as well, right? So, I think if I could echo one sentiment about the findings from this paper is that I kind of wish the entire rice community, and I think they are more and more, as quality, and we're losing markets, would not only value the work that the university has done on these quality issues, but maybe embrace it and make that the standard. 

Instead of the exception that we are the quality kind of leaders, I wish that was the standard that every institution that bred for rice was using.

 

[15:15] Jenifer:

Were there any challenges or any successes that were surprising that you found while conducting this this research?

 

[15:22] Lanier:

All of the data was derived through sources at the university. And luckily, over the 15 years I've worked here across the division and the university, people have been very generous about sharing their data. And this comes from agronomists and plant breeders and, for those who don't know, economists are famous for smashing and grabbing data, right? So, we don't generate our own data. We go to agronomists and plant breeders and say, I know you spent millions and millions of dollars on this data collection. We'd like it for free, but we'd also like to tell the story that you're doing. And that's, I think, under that guise, it was very easy to work with people across the division and the university collecting this data. And then once the data was collected, Dr. Durand and I then subsequently analyzed it. I think research here has been very synergetic, which I think speaks to the culture that the university provides, both within departments and across departments, because this study would never been able to unfold like it did if it wasn't for that collaboration across departments.

 

[16:21] Jenifer:

So, Dr. Durand was the coauthor on this specific research. Were there any other collaborators that you'd like to mention?

 

[16:29] Lanier:

Yes. So basically, the entire rice breeding team in Stuttgart, which are too numerous to name. And economists, we always get teased because we're soft scientists, which we are ... but the nexus of soft science and hard science really solves the global problem. So, I mean, it was very nice to be able to call down to Stuttgart or run down to the agronomy department and ask people hard science questions. Because economists are notorious for assuming things and the hard scientists absolutely hate assumptions. And so again, that hearkens back to, I think, the collaborative nature that has been established within the Division of Agriculture and the Bumpers College, to be able to go into anyone's office and ask questions for help. And without that assistance, I don't think this paper would ever had the legs to stand on to get published or make the impact, hopefully, it does.

 

[17:22] Jenifer:

Is there anything else about it that you'd like to discuss that I didn't ask?

 

[17:26] Lanier:

You know, I think this study is unique in the sense that as the world grows, population-wise, we're going to need more food. And everyone's answer is always ‘we need more yield’. And that's not to say that yield is not important, but post-harvest loss, which I kind of throw in broken rice into, let's not forget that we're producing things and then losing them after we harvest. That is literally the low hanging fruit. 

And so, I think for me, that was the real cool thing about this study is that we're already producing this rice. We just need to get more of it on people's plates. And increased genetics and genetic quality, like plant breeders and specifically rice breeders in this study at the University of Arkansas, their hard work has been shown to make a difference, and I think it's going to continue to show to make a difference. And again, I don't want to discredit the unbelievable milestones they've made in yield enhancement as well. We didn't focus on that in this study. We did in a previous study. But I think this is work that sometimes doesn't go documented and quantified. And I think it was very gratifying for me. And, I don't want to put words in Dr. Durand'’s mouth, but it's very rewarding to quantify the great work that your colleagues do that sometimes doesn't get noticed. And I think that was a real spirit of why we undertook this research.

 

[18:45] Jenifer:

And it's important for everyone else then to see it. And it's on paper, it's written and to kind of paint a picture for things that we don't normally think about. Dr. Nalley, thank you so much for your time and explaining this research to us.

 

[18:58] Lanier:

Thank you.

 

[19:01] Jenifer:

That was Dr. Lanier Nalley, interim director and professor in the Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness department, talking to us about his recent research, Feeding More with the Same Output: How Enhanced Rice Quality Genetics Can Lead to Increased Food Security and Producer Profitability. Thanks for listening to Food, Farms and Forests. I'm Jenifer Fouch. Don't forget to subscribe!

 

[19:23] Intro/Outro:

The Arkansas Food, Farms and Forests podcast is produced by the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, the research arm of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. Visit aaes.uada.edu for more information.