Severe drought spurs Australia to import rice

SYDNEY: This season, like almost 90% of Australian rice growers, Rob Massina decided to skip planting the grain on his land near the tiny town of Jerilderie, about four hours north of Melbourne.

For the president of the Australian Ricegrowers’ Association, low water allocations and years of severe drought meant conditions were too dry to sow the crop on his property at the southern end of the MurrayDarling Basin.

“A lot of the towns in this part of the world have been built on rice,” said Massina.

“It’s a way of life for the southern Riverina and it’s currently got its challenges,” he said, referring to the name of the local region.

Australian rice planting and output have slumped more than 90% since the 2017-18 season. Its national 2019-20 crop is expected to be 57,000 tonnes, the second-smallest output on record and the lowest since the 200708, according to a June report from government forecaster Abares.

Though Australia has always been reliant on imports for certain varieties that can’t be grown locally, like Basmati, its supermarkets may be entirely without local supplies by the end of 2020, according to Rob Gordon, chief executive of Sunrice, which buys about 98% of domestic output and supplies local and export markets.

The company has a global appetite for about 1.4 million tons a year, meaning Australian production is meeting only a sliver of that demand.

“We’re already supplementing from Thailand and Cambodia,” Gordon said, for fragrant and long grain rice.

“As we start running out of domestic supply of our other varieties, we’ll start opening up supply chains from elsewhere around the world.

“We’re bringing in rice from Uruguay at the moment,” he said by phone.

Rice represents only a tiny fragment of Australia’s agriculture industry, and the country is a small player in global trade.

However, shrinking supplies of locally grown rice were thrown into focus earlier this year when Covid-19 panic buying saw shoppers strip grocery shelves of everything from rice to flour and pasta.

The government has reassured residents that their food supply is secure – the country of 25 million produces enough food for 75 million and imports only 11% of food and drink by value – but rice remains a gap in domestic production.

That could create issues amid global food protectionism as governments start trimming exports in order to shore up domestic supply, Gordon said.