Elizabeth Mills, Writer, Forum Stories

• Rice is the world’s largest staple foodstuff and one for which demand is rising.
• Rice is both affected by and contributes to climate change: challenges that call for coordinated action across policy, science, agriculture and education.
• Real solutions depend on understanding the true costs of rice cultivation and working together to tackle its many interlinked challenges.

Who doesn’t eat rice? And that’s fundamentally the challenge. A staple foodstuff for more than half of the world’s population and an important one for much of the rest, rice is facing a tough outlook. Climate change both threatens existing production and creates wider issues for cultivation, including water conservation and productivity.

But rice isn’t just a victim of a changing climate; it is also contributing to the problem. The traditional methods of cultivation produce relatively large amounts of the greenhouse gas methane (totalling approximately 10-12% of global methane, a gas that warms the planet far quicker than carbon dioxide).

“Carbon markets and climate finance are becoming pivotal in accelerating the low-emissions rice transition.”

It’s also water-intensive (accounting for between 34% and 43% of the world’s irrigation water), which, for an increasingly arid planet, is a problem.

Without a transition in food systems, this points to growing levels of food insecurity for a large part of the growing global population, worsening problems for farmers and the loss of an important cultural, culinary and economic element for many countries.

Balancing this grave outlook, however, scientific developments and groundbreaking pilots are creating a real sense of optimism for resilient transformation.

How rice feeds the world, underpinning key economies

Rice is a cash crop for several countries. China is the largest producer, followed by India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Viet Nam and Thailand. The grain feeds more than 4 billion people daily and in some countries represents 70% of an individual’s daily calorie intake.

Against this backdrop, several countries, including recently China, have made it a central part of new domestic food security plans.

Unfortunately, in the face of a changing climate, conventional growing practices don’t make rice a very resilient crop. Rice needs water, but not too much or it will effectively drown.

Similarly, it likes heat but is adversely affected by rising temperatures, which undermines the ability of the plant’s flowers to pollinate. It’s typically grown in areas of low elevation, which makes it vulnerable to rising sea levels and saline intrusion.

Three further challenges face rice cultivation, namely:

• Climate change is rendering rice cultivated using traditional methods less nutritious.
• Crop yields are becoming increasingly unpredictable as wet seasons become wetter and dry seasons drier; studies show that for every 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature, yields can decline by more than 8%.
• Global rice output is estimated to need to rise by approximately 15-20% to meet food demand in the coming decades, while being grown using less water and employing methods that produce less methane.

Clearly, transformative approaches are much needed.

Understanding the true cost of rice production

Rice has a price tag but beyond the obvious monetary costs, there are environmental ones. Multiple factors feed into how much it costs to buy once it hits the shelves but these are not specifically “environmental.”

Increasingly, attempts are being made to monetize these costs, such as rice’s use of arable land, the greenhouse gases it emits or the biodiversity loss it causes, providing a far truer indication of “value” and creating a more open debate about who pays these costs.

Reflecting the economic, nutritional and cultural importance of rice, reducing these costs while also improving the grain’s resilience is imperative. Without this, farmers’ livelihoods will become more precarious, and some may face difficulties in remaining self-sufficient – a problem given the integral role rice plays in countering malnutrition in poorer communities.

Almost 560 million people living on less than $1.25 (the historic measure of poverty) live in rice-producing areas.

With international and interconnected supply chains being at risk, the focus is on finding solutions.

Solutions to rice challenges

Modification and production

It’s to the grain’s advantage that it has more than 120,000 varieties. This suggests the potential for genetic engineering to enhance the physical resilience and nutritional value of rice. Among the areas that have been or are being explored are improving photosynthesis, reducing the crop’s methane emissions and boosting its vitamin content to improve its micronutrient content.

Much attention is being paid to different methods of production, particularly “alternate wetting and drying” (AWD).

This helps reduce environmental impact, particularly through greenhouse gas emission reductions (some pilot projects show reductions of up to 70% where AWD has been used), boosts yields and improves soil health, in turn supporting biodiversity.

As the name suggests, paddy fields are flooded, drained and flooded again, rather than simply flooding them at the start of the process and leaving the crop to grow. To date, AWD is showing good results in geographies as diverse as Arkansas (United States), India, Italy and Thailand.

Viet Nam, in particular, has emerged as a global leader in this transition. The government, under a commitment announced by Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính, aims to target 1 million hectares of low-emission rice by 2030.

Early pilots across seven provinces have shown promising results, with increased yields and reduced emissions and the country has begun exporting low-emission rice. This leadership underscores how national commitments can catalyze regional and global momentum.

Digital technologies and artificial intelligence are also increasingly enabling this transition. Precision agriculture tools and digital monitoring systems can help farmers optimize water use in AWD and track emissions reductions more accurately.

These technologies also strengthen measurement, reporting and verification systems, providing the data needed to scale low-emission practices.

Disseminating knowledge

Sharing best practices and knowledge is essential. A notable example of international cooperation in this regard is the Thai Rice NAMA project, which commenced in 2018 with the support of the German development agency, GIZ. This has, in the intervening years, helped raise the awareness of Thai farmers about the effects of climate change on rice cultivation.

It also identified challenges to the adoption potential of low-emission technologies, which no doubt influenced a second phase of the project, announced in 2024. In this phase, the authorities aim to implement systematic changes in the food industry and develop enhanced support measures for farmers.

“Business remains ideally placed to send the strongest demand signals.”

Harnessing consumer power to transform value chains

Major shifts are required in the supply and value chains. Practices must alter and it is the consumer who has the power to effect this. At a simplistic level, a market is simply supply and demand.

Government policy – whether through subsidies, product restriction, tariffs or other measures – can affect supply, while major manufacturers and consumers provide the demand signals.

Rice cultivation in some areas is shifting to become more environmentally friendly and this trend needs to be encouraged. Great momentum can come from large buyers who are interested in making green procurement commitments, signalling this interest through the value chain, which in turn feeds through to the farmers who adopt greener practices.

Similarly, by linking consumer awareness to the demand signals that businesses provide, this further creates systemic change.

Several initiatives have emerged to support this trend. The First Movers Coalition for Food is a global initiative seeking to harness the collective demand of its large stakeholders to create a more sustainable food system.

Taking as its premise that the means to decarbonize food systems are available, just not the ability to scale them up, the coalition brings together key players in an attempt to accelerate progress.

Predominantly a business coalition, it enjoys the support of partners – among them the governments of Thailand and the United Arab Emirates, the United Nations World Food Programme and the University of Tokyo – which provide additional knowledge and resources.

Another First Movers Coalition for Food partner is the International Rice Research Institute, which is working in numerous areas and with many governments and agencies.

The scope of its research is sizable, ranging from technological research and growing techniques to working with farmers to change farming practices and promoting digital tools, while offering skills and expertise to scale up solutions.

Business remains ideally placed to send the strongest demand signals. Recently, DFI Retail Group announced a five-year partnership with Thai rice exporter Toumi Foods and Product Co. Ltd to buy low-carbon rice. The rice is the result of a cultivation programme, which recently won a UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Achievement Award for its contribution to SDG 13: Climate action.

Similarly, global rice producer Tilda (part of Ebro Foods) began its Sustainable Farming Project in 2021, to create a sustainable rice supply chain. It seeks to encourage its basmati farmers to switch to climate-friendly methods of rice production, as well as farmers who don’t supply to the company.

Measuring and reducing rice’s carbon footprint

Another area that is gaining traction is carbon accounting. This presents a more accurate sense of the real “cost” of food by measuring its greenhouse gas footprint. A water-intensive crop that produces high levels of methane, such as rice, will, unfortunately, have a high cost.

This again underscores the need to develop new varieties and explore alternative farming techniques that help reduce this carbon footprint.

Among the key aims of the First Movers Coalition for Food is to find ways to reduce methane emissions, decrease water usage for irrigation and increase yields.

As part of its Decarbonizing Rice initiative, partner Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory is combining a range of approaches – sustainable water management, enhancing the soil microbiome, developing climate-resilient rice varieties and improving fertigation – to create a more resilient, climate-friendly crop.

As a result of trials in India and Singapore, the initiative has recorded methane emission reductions of between 20% and 50%, reduced water usage by almost 50% and increased yields between 5% and 10%.

Elsewhere, US-based Indigo Ag has a vision to utilize agriculture to create solutions that can be scaled up, solving pressing problems for farmers and agribusinesses while also meeting the demand from corporations seeking sustainability solutions.

It is pursuing pilot programmes throughout the United States, targeting such areas as helping farmers boost soil health and their profits, protecting the environment through greenhouse gas reduction and removal, and improving food quality, quantity and traceability.

Taking a different approach, Bayer’s Rice Carbon Program is being pursued in 11 states of India. Earlier this year, the company announced the first tranche of carbon credits from thousands of Indian farmers who are implementing regenerative practices, specifically AWD and “direct-seeded rice,” which, like AWD, has been shown to reduce methane emissions significantly.

Carbon markets and climate finance are becoming pivotal in accelerating the low-emissions rice transition. By generating verified carbon credits, farmers can access new income streams, which helps de-risk the adoption of sustainable practices.

Mobilizing this finance at scale will be key to ensuring that the environmental gains from practices such as AWD and direct seeding also translate into lasting economic benefits for producers.

Why transforming food (and rice) systems need collaboration

What this all points to is a potent mix of scientific research, as well as partnerships with rice farmers, their respective governments and the private sector. To achieve progress, such wide-ranging collaboration is essential.

As early forays into regenerative agricultural practices have shown, introducing change can be costly and risky. No single element in the supply chain – particularly farmers – can or should be expected to bear this burden.

But the farmer can’t be left out of the equation and as the examples above highlight, is very much at the centre of new programmes and initiatives. This helps mitigate the risk that climate and nature become the focus, rather than social goals.

In fact, all three are needed, underscoring the inclusive element required to make rice cultivation more resilient and less costly.

To truly decarbonize its production, a holistic approach involving multiple techniques and stakeholders is necessary to both effect change and spread risk and cost.

https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/10/how-much-is-a-bowl-of-rice-food-security-climate-change/

Published Date: October 16, 2025