Technical background

The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) issued the Declaration of the International Year of Rice (IYR) in 2004 supported by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nation’s 31st Conference. The Declaration invites FAO to facilitate implementation of the IYR in collaboration with governments, the United Nations Development Programme, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research Centres and other relevant organisations of the United Nations and non-governmental organisations.^[1] The UN action comes at a critical time when the development environment is marked by globalisation and emerging technologies that present opportunities and challenges to Asian rural communities that depend on rice-based production systems. The natural resource management considerations of rice production add to concerns associated with the viability and productivity of ricebased and rice-integrated livelihood systems.

The IYR will focus global attention on rice, the crop that drives millions of people’s livelihood strategies in Asia. For most of the Asian population, rice is the basic source of calories and the most familiar food crop driving rural livelihoods. In Asian cultures, rice symbolises life-giving grain, and the cultivation of rice drives the seasonal events in rural life. Rice centred livelihood systems are central to rural economies and determine the wealth and health of rural households. Thus, poverty alleviation agendas in rural Asia cannot ignore the economic realities of households dependent on a rice-based livelihood. Rice-based household economics comprise production of the rice crop as well as diverse economic enterprises that arise from crop production such as creation and utilisation of rice by-products. Rice-based livelihood systems intricately integrate crop production and rural industry, such as rice-fish, rice-livestock, rice-fodder, with the local agro-ecological environment.

Asian women make significant contributions to the total labour force in rice production. Women’s work in the rice paddies enables many countries to become rice exporters. It often is women’s knowledge of bio-diversity that determines rice variety, seed selection and preservation. The unpaid work of rural women, who are statistically uncounted, constantly overlooked in the policy arena and consistently underserved by the agricultural support services, supports the foundations of rice-based systems. Given women’s key role in rice-based livelihood systems, gender differentiated analysis should be integral to generation of new strategies for rice farming households in the IYR. From a global perspective, the United Nations Millennium Declaration resolved, "to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women as effective ways to combat poverty, hunger and disease and to stimulate development that is truly sustainable".^[2] The FAO World Food Summit Plan of Action (1996) and the political declaration adopted at the World Food Summit five years later, affirms the commitment to advance and empower rural women as an essential strategy to achieve stable food security (2002). Hence, it is appropriate and even imperative that gender dimensions in the rice-based livelihood systems should be highlighted and actions identified for the IYR.

In this context, the Gender and Development Division of FAO/RAP organised the regional technical consultation Gender Dimensions in Asian Rice Livelihood Systems in the Changing Milieu of Technologies and Economy in 2004. The meeting generated policy and programme recommendations for the IYR.