19. Rice Production and Future Outlook
- INDEX -
Rice Production of the World
Yield
Southeast Asia
Africa
Rice Diet
Concluding Remarks
Rice Production of the World
The world production of paddy is 755 million tons, according to the annual production report of FAO 2019, of which 86%, or 656 million tons, is produced by the developing countries of Asia, including China.
In contrast, Africa and Central-South America have only 39 million and 30 million tons, with 5.1% and 4.0% of the world production, respectively.
Japanese production is a little over 10 million tons. Thus, the world’s rice production is highly concentrated in the Southeast Asian region. Table 9 and 10 show the general status of rice production by means of harvesting area, yield, and production volume of the three major rice-production regions.
Yield
Of the three regions, Africa has the lowest yield per hectare. There are two countries in Africa that have yields below 1 ton. This must be because the use of the upland rice is most common there. The yield of the Southeast Asian region has improved considerably as compared with that of 20 ? 30 years ago.
In contrast, the Central-South American region has the highest yield, because modern irrigated rice-cropping is done using land that has easy access to water. In the case of Brazil, however, its national average yield is low, because upland rice of low productivity is the majority there, as explained before.