Rice around the world
(excerpted from the 3rd edition
of the Rice Almanac, pp. 59-235)

World rice production in 2007 was approximately 645 million t. At least 114 countries grow rice and more than 50 have an annual production of 100,000 t or more. Asian farmers produce about 90% of the total, with two countries, China and India, growing more than half the total crop.

For most rice-producing countries where annual production exceeds 1 million t, rice is the staple food. In Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam, rice provides 50-80% of the total calories consumed. Notable exceptions are Egypt, Nigeria, and Pakistan, where rice contributes only 5-10% of per capita daily caloric intake.

The typical Asian farmer plants rice primarily to meet family needs. Nevertheless, nearly half the crop goes to market; most of that is sold locally. Only 6-7% of world rice production is traded internationally.

Featured here are the top 10 rice producing countries: China, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Japan, Philippines, and Brazil followed by tables and graphs of relevant data on another 54 countries that produce significant quantities of rice.

In general, the scales of the various graphs are identical from one country to another for any given data type (e.g., role of rice in the diet, level of per capita production). This consistency allows easier visual comparison across countries, but it comes at the cost of obscuring the time trends for countries whose data cluster at the bottom of the uniform scales.

There are exceptions to this scale consistency, however. They are most common in the graphs showing indices of production, area, and yield because some countries expanded production and area harvested very rapidly in percent-age terms (often from a very low base) during the past 35 years. Given such extraordinary rapid growth, the use of a common scale for all countries would nearly obliterate the time trends of many countries, including most if not all of the world's major rice producers. Thus, a decision was made to use different scales for certain countries on some graphs. When the scale is not identical across all countries, a note to that effect is included for the countries with different scales. In addition to different scales for indices of production, area harvested, and yield per hectare, several countries also have different scales for per capita production (Cambodia, Guyana, Suriname).

Net trade status is defined here as net exports (i.e., exports minus imports) divided by the sum of production plus imports. For these graphs, the scale is between -100 and +100. This scale is adequate to cover most instances, but not all. For some countries (Uruguay and Australia) in some years, FAO data show that exports exceeded total production. This is possible if some of the exports in a given year came from the previous year's production.

The source of raw data for all graphs is the FAOSTAT online electronic database, and the most recent data for any given category are preliminary. All indices for production, area harvested, and yield per hectare are based on an index value of 1966 = 100.

National statistical organizations do not produce data on area and production under different rice ecosystems. The basic source of IRRI's information on rice areas by ecosystem is the surveys by R. and E. Huke (Rice area by type of culture: South, Southeast, and East Asia, a revised and updated data base). The data are estimates from the returns of agricultural censuses and available Landsat imagery and other maps.

Some estimates of rice yields for different ecosystems are from personal communications with national agricultural research scientists and outposted IRRI scientists. To make the data consistent with total rice production for a country, as published by FAO, we used the yields reported by the national system for the minor ecosystems and used the residual as the yield from the major ecosystem. Production figures for each ecosystem were derived from area and yield estimates.

Some general information about the various countries was taken from the World Factbook 2000 (U.S. Central Intelligence Agency) and The World Guide 2001/2002 (New Internationalist Publications, Oxford, England).

All other information is from the FAO Agro-stat database and from statistical publications of individual countries.

Note that in the General Information section for each country, GNI is gross national income. It is a new term for what was formerly referred to as GNP (gross national product). PPP is purchasing power parity. PPP compensates for the fact that prices of many commodities or services differ between countries. If country A has lower (higher) prices than in the base country (usually the United States) for comparable items, the purchasing power of any given quantity of money will be greater (less) in country A than in the United States, and the GNI in PPP$ of country A will be higher (lower) than its GNI. The GNI per capita in PPP$ (as presented in the country pages for year 2000) is a better measure of income than GNI when comparing levels of material well-being across countries.

For information on the rice scenario in the European Union, click here.

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