Rice: Staff of Life
Rice Paddies
Rice PaddiesRice was an integral part of the Timorese diet, and for many citizens, a meal without rice was not considered a proper meal. Although the Timorese ate cassava, potato, sweet potato, taros and maize, if households could afford rice, that was always their first preference. This was a legacy of the Indonesian occupation, which sought to convert the Timorese to rice-growing by telling them that to eat root crops or tubers was uncivilized. [7] In 2010, 31 percent of farmers cultivated rice. [8] They did so primarily to meet subsistence needs; in general, rural households produced too little to feed even themselves for about four months each year. [9]
Timor-Leste had 70,000 hectares of lowland suitable for irrigated rice cultivation, but only 40,000 were farmed as of 2011. Timorese farmers had to work with biophysical constraints—steep terrain, poor soil structure and fertility, and erratic rainfall. However, some lowland regions, like Baucau, Viqueque and Bobonaro, had benefited from the construction of irrigation infrastructure during the Indonesian occupation. These districts had the topography and irrigation infrastructure to become the country’s “rice bowls.”
However, productivity was low, averaging in 2011 three metric tonnes (MT) of paddy (or unhusked rice) per hectare. [10] This represented an increase from previous years, thanks in part to government-funded distribution of improved seed varieties and fertilizer. But it continued to fall short of the sector’s productivity potential, estimated by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) at five metric tonnes per hectare. Absent ongoing government intervention, the yield was at risk of dropping once more.
Rice deficit. Since domestic rice farmers produced only 70,000 of the estimated 130,000 metric tons of milled rice citizens consumed annually, the country filled the resulting production-consumption gap by importing from Vietnam and Indonesia (see Exhibit 1 ). [11] A high population growth rate of 2.4 percent further complicated the situation. [12] If unchecked, Timor-Leste would soon need an even higher level of domestic production and/or imports to feed everyone.
[7] Author’s interview with Dr. Helen Hill, Melbourne, Australia, on July 12, 2011. Dr. Hill, of Victoria University, was writing a book on Timor-Leste. The information was confirmed in other interviews conducted in Timor-Leste in July 2011.
[8] World Bank (2010). Raising Agricultural Productivity: Issues and Options , 14.
[9] Timor-Leste Standards of Living Survey, 2007.
[10] “Paddy” was unhusked rice, whereas ‘milled rice’ was recovered from paddy, usually at an average recovery rate of 60 percent by weight of paddy rice (55 percent using village milling and 65 percent using commercial milling). International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Rice Knowledge Bank (2009). See: http://www.knowledgebank.irri.org/rkb/index.php/rice-milling . Yield figure from in-country meetings with FAO and MTCI, June-August 2011.
[11] This was approximately 120,000 Mt of paddy, according to estimates by MTCI and MAF, 2010.
[12] National Statistics Directorate, Ministry of Finance “ Population and Housing Census 2010. Preliminary Results ” (MoF, 2010), Timor-Leste.