title: The quiet revolution in Asia's rice value chains.
abstract: There is a rapid transformation afoot in the rice value chain in Asia. The upstream is changing quickly-farmers are undertaking capital-led intensification and participating in burgeoning markets for land rental, fertilizer and pesticides, irrigation water, and seed, and shifting from subsistence to small commercialized farms; in some areas landholdings are concentrating. Midstream, in wholesale and milling, there is a quiet revolution underway, with thousands of entrepreneurs investing in equipment, increasing scale, diversifying into higher quality, and the segments are undergoing consolidation and vertical coordination and integration. Mills, especially in China, are packaging and branding, and building agent networks in wholesale markets, and large mills are building direct relationships with supermarkets. The downstream retail segment is undergoing a "supermarket revolution," again with the lead in change in China. In most cases the government is not playing a direct role in the market, but enabling this transformation through infrastructural investment. The transformation appears to be improving food security for cities by reducing margins, offering lower consumer rice prices, and increasing quality and diversity of rice. This paper discusses findings derived from unique stacked surveys of all value chain segments in seven zones, more and less developed, around Bangladesh, China, India, and Vietnam.
authors.affiliation: School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China.|Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics Department, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan.|International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Reardon
authors.affiliation: International Food Policy Research Institute, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Kevin Z
authors.initials: KZ
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: International Food Policy Research Institute, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
authors.forename: Bart
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Minten
authors.affiliation: Asian Development Bank, Manila, the Philippines.
authors.forename: Lourdes
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Adriano
authors.affiliation: Vietnam Academy of Agricultural Science, Hanoi, Vietnam.
authors.forename: The Anh
authors.initials: TA
authors.lastname: Dao
authors.affiliation: Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Jianying
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: International Food Policy Research Institute, New Delhi, India.
authors.forename: Sunipa Das
authors.initials: SD
authors.lastname: Gupta
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends*; D001208:Asia; D001459:Bangladesh; D002681:China; D003132:Commerce; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D003906:Developing Countries; D005308:Fertilizers; D005523:Food Supply; D007194:India; D012275:Oryza; D010575:Pesticides; D014744:Vietnam
chemical_list: D005308:Fertilizers; D010575:Pesticides
keywords: agriculture; development; markets; rice; value chains