Reinventing Rice as Countries Cultivate Change

Rice feeds over half of the world’s population and sustains 144 million people—80 percent of them smallholder farmers. With a projected 30 percent surge in demand by 2050, the rice industry will only grow in importance. But the crop’s vulnerability to climate change and slowing productivity gains, its environmental footprint, and its limited nutritional value make it clear that business as usual is no longer an option.

Many rice-producing countries are already taking this challenge seriously—introducing reforms, innovations, and investments to bring the sector into a new era of higher returns, lower emissions, and better nutrition.

Viet Nam: growing more with less

In Viet Nam, a top rice producer and exporter, half the crop comes from the fertile Mekong Delta—known as the nation’s “Rice Bowl.” Today, however, environmental degradation and the impacts of climate change are beginning to affect yields. Moreover, rice fields in the Mekong Delta region emit almost half of the country’s agriculture greenhouse gas emissions.

In response, the Vietnamese government launched the “One Million Hectares of High-Quality Rice” program to cut input costs, ease the burden on farmers, and protect soil health.  However, with rice farming deeply rooted in tradition, one of the biggest challenges has been to convince farmers to adopt new practices.

“It took a lot of time to move from traditional rice cultivation to low-remission rice cultivation,” said Le Trung Thu, a member of the Cong Tien Cooperative. “But the trainings I attended helped me to be more efficient.”

Between 2016 and 2022, with support from the World Bank, Viet Nam trained over 155,000 rice farming households to grow rice using climate-resilient methods across 180,000 hectares of land. These new techniques – such as alternate wetting and drying - intermittently draining fields instead of keeping them continuously flooded - have helped farmers save money from reduced supplies and increased their profits by 30 to 35 percent.

“I have reduced production costs for seed, fertilizer, pesticide and water,” says Le Dong Phuong, a rice farmer in Can Tho City in the Mekong Delta. While Viet Nam’s average rice yield is close to six tons per hectare, Phuong is producing eight. “I can now provide for my children and cover my expenses more comfortably,” she says. 

Along with costs savings, the new techniques are helping farmers conserve water and reduce methane emissions, a gas 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

Indonesia: boosting rice yields through smarter irrigation

Meanwhile, in Indonesia, where 77 percent of farmers depend on rice cultivation, the government is placing greater focus on irrigation. Small-scale irrigation plays an important role for over 20 percent of farmers. However, much of this irrigation system has fallen into disrepair.

“We did not have enough water because the irrigation system was not maintained properly, and our farming techniques were not advanced. Back then, my crops simply used to fail,” said Darta Ego a rice farmer in Indonesia.   

The country has now set out to rehabilitate and modernize its irrigation infrastructure, but perhaps more importantly, to rationalize and improve how water is allocated, managed, and used across the rice landscape. One key innovation is the establishment and disclosure of irrigation service agreements between water providers and farmers, holding service providers accountable for the quality of their services. This has resulted in building a culture of greater transparency and trust that has benefitted nearly 350,000 farmers.

“When we didn’t have enough water, our crop was small,” says Sukeni, who owns a paddy farm in Jatimulya, Indonesia. Before the existence of her service agreement, she had to pay someone to pump water, but the timing was unpredictable and she often received water too late or not at all. Now, she says, “Our paddy is fuller and more profitable.”  

Bangladesh’s bold plan: doubling yields by 2050

Countries in South Asia are also major rice producers. One of them is Bangladesh, the world’s third-largest rice producer. Since 1971, Bangladesh has quadrupled its rice production from 9.7 million to 41 million tons, marking one of the fastest productivity gains globally over such as short period.

But yield growth has slowed over the last decade, due to limited mechanization, significant post-harvest losses, declining youth engagement in farming, and mounting environmental stress.

Bangladesh has now put in place a plan to double rice productivity from four tons per hectare in 2015 to six tons per hectare by 2050. Under this plan, the government will expand rice cultivation and mechanization, with an emphasis on lower glycemic index varieties that generate more profit.

To finance this effort, the Government of Bangladesh is considering repurposing some of its public spending to make more funds available for research, extension services, and infrastructure.

In neighboring India, the size of the country’s arable land is roughly equivalent to that in the continent of Africa. Rice alone represents 47.7 million hectares, supporting 67 million families of producers.

Despite its relatively low productivity, India is the world’s second largest rice producer in terms of volume and is a major exporter. To continue to modernize the sector, the country has set out to achieve four priorities: improving productivity, increasing water efficiency, lowering emissions, and diversifying crops.

India will implement a number of technologies to achieve these goals, including wider use of direct seeding, organic soil conservation, and mid-season drainage. Due to the large size of India’s rice sector, these upgrades could result in significant food security improvements—both within India and across the world.

To support countries as they improve their rice sector, the World Bank Group is introducing the Scaling Next Generation Rice Impact Program – a peer learning program connecting rice-producing countries to take innovations and sustainable practices to scale.

As farmers adopt new methods and see real improvements in their yields and livelihoods, the seeds of transformation are taking root. With continued support and shared learning, the future of rice—and the millions who depend on it—is looking brighter.