RICE RATOONING - IRRI books - International Rice Research Institute

Economic perspectivesof rice ratooningJ. C. Flinn and M. D. MercadoInternational Rice Research InstituteP.O. Box 933, Manila, PhilippinesA computer-aided search of IRRI’s library identified 120 papers key-worded toratooning. Although this may not be an exhaustive survey of the literature, fewerthan five addressed economic aspects of rice ratooning, and in only one waseconomic analysis the main theme (3). We also did not discover any systematicallyreported national data on area or yield of ratoon rice. This means the relativeimportance of ratooning compared to seeded rice could not be examined.Given the lack of background, our discussion is not based on accumulatedinsights into economic aspects of ratooning. Even if references had been plentiful,the methodology would have been more interesting than the results. Economicanalyses tend to be time-bound to prices and technology. Location-specificmethodology can be adapted to analyze specific sites. Our contribution to thisproceedings is a review of methods which may help evaluate rice ratooningeconomically. This analysis is divided into three steps:• First, a system framework is sketched to help judge whether rice ratooning isadvantageous in a particular ricefield, at a given point in time;• Second, budgeting methods are presented which permit evaluation of theprofitability of rice ratooning versus other uses of land;• Third, a structure is presented to help judge the benefits of investing in riceratooning research.RICE RATOONING IN A SYSTEMS CONTEXTRice ratooning is visualized as a competitive form of land use (Fig. 1). When themain rice crop is harvested, the farmer must decide whether it is technically feasibleto grow another crop on that piece of land in that cropping year. This is decisionpoint A. Technical feasibility will be judged by:• expectations about the weather (e.g. temperature, daylength) during thegrowth period of proposed crops and at harvest;• prospects for a future water supply (irrigation or rainfall): how much, forhow long, and how distributed;• the crop maturation time; and• fertility and pest status of the field and surrounding fields and the likely pestdynamics over the course of the crop’s growth.