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For
the regions of the world suffering from food and water insecurity,
solutions may be at hand with the recently concluded international
dialogue on rice and water at the International Rice Research Institute
(IRRI) on Mar. 6–8 in Los Baños, Laguna.
The event commenced
the inclusive one-year dialogue among key players to establish the
hoped-for functional consensus at the international development
policy level so that policy makers at the regional and national
levels and extension professionals could mainstream the infrastructural,
institutional, and agronomic options, among other things, in key
rice-growing countries.
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In
his welcome speech, PCARRD Executive Director Patricio S. Faylon
said, “We should be able to arrive at a realistic perspective
and a consensus toward developing a replicable package of best options
to raise global rice production along a sustainable path, considering
the use of resource-efficient technologies, particularly on the
use of water.”
Senior officials
of key international development agencies, research institutions,
regional bodies, professional institutions, and selected national
governments from India, Japan, Australia, Thailand, France, United
Kingdom, the United States, and the Philippines took part in the
dialogue’s 11 technical sessions.
Highlighting
the sessions were technical presentations by experts from the Food
and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), International
Food Policy Research Institute, World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF),
IRRI, National Irrigation Administration, Philippine Rice Research
Institute (PhilRice), and the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement.
Topics were
on agronomy, infrastructure, economic incentives, institutional
opportunities, environmental considerations, comprehensive assessment
of water and rice, IRRI’s environmental agenda, status of
irrigation in the Philippines, water-saving technologies, and community
perspective.
The dialogue
was sponsored by the WWF, FAO, IRRI, PhilRice, PCARRD, and the International
Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics. (Ma. Rowena
M. Baltazar, S&T Media Service)
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