I read two interesting blog posts at Brunei Resources on Brunei’s rice self-sufficiency targets. The posts discuss the state of rice imports, hovering at around 30,000 metric tonnes per annum and of the feasibility of Brunei reaching self-sufficiency of rices.
So I thought to run a short analytic on it … based on data From Brunei.fm and agriculture.gov.bn:
Current –> 884 metric tonnes of production vs. 1,356 hectares area under paddy 2008 = 0.65 tonnes per hectare
Short term goal 2010 (13 months from now) –> 5,800 metric tonnes of production vs. 2,360 hectares = 2.46 tonnes per hectare. [Note that the 2,360 hectares doesn't reconcile to 4,904 ha new + 1,356 ha existing land area on page 19 of the report]
Medium term goal 2015 (5 years from now) –> 18,000 metric tonnes of production vs. 5,360 hectares = 3.36 tonnes per hectare.
More analysis after the break:
So that’s a steep jump, from 0.65 tonnes/ hectare to 2.46 tonnes/hectare overnight. You’re probably thinking … how feasible is this? Well, Mr Chai Yum Fatt reckons that pusu seeds can yield 0.5 tonnes / hectare, but higher yield seeds can do better. Part of the plan is also to use “High yielding varieties” (HYV) of rice that yield up to 3 tonnes / hectare.
Now this is starting to make sense. Part of the problem with the low 0.65 tonnes/hectare yield was that we weren’t using the latest technology.
So what is the benchmark that we should measure ourselves against?
In China they are yielding approx 7.1 tonnes/hectare compared to a world average of 3.9 tonnes/hectare, while China’s “high yield” areas are growing at 13.55 tonnes/hectare. And check out Philippines where the yield in `90s was around 2.81 to 2.93 metric tonnes per hectare.
The bottom line
So the 2.46 tonnes / hectare target by the end of 2010 *should* be achievable, provided we adopt modern advances in technology such as HYV. Well – lets see where we stand in 13 months time. Compared with PhilRice yields, I’d guess that if we’ve done good work, then we’d see yields in the range of 2.5 – 3.5 tonnes / hectare in calendar year 2010.
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