The Korean Journal of Crop Science ISSN:0252-9777(Print) 2287-8432(Online) 한국작물학회지

Being a staple food for more than half of the population of the world and South Korea, rice is an important crop. For the past 20 years, global paddy rice cultivation area and production have shown an annual growth of 0.46% and 1.61%, respectively. Global rice consumption for food and processing has increased by 1.37% and 3.68%, respectively. Due to the main reason for such increasing human population, it is expected that from 439 million tons in 2010, additional 116 million tons will be needed in 2035. Global rice imports and exports have doubled in the last 20 years. However, in spite of such increment, global rice exports in 2013 were 8.4% of the total production. It is thought that rice protection policies in the producing countries are the main reason for such small scale of rice trading. In the past 5 years, India recorded the largest growth rate in rice exports (51.4%), whereas China showed the largest growth rate in imports (61.0%). For global utilization of milled rice during the same period, approximately 79.4% was used as food, 7.2% as animal feeds, and 1.4% for processing. Regionally, Asia has shown a similar pattern to the global rice usage, whereas utilization for processing in America, for food in Africa, and for animal feed in Europe was relatively higher than the global rice usage. Korea’s cultivation area and production since the last 5 years, are 0.5% and 0.8% of those of the world, respectively. Its annual rice export is approximately 3,000 tons, which is 0.01% of the global rice export. Korea’s rice utilization is high for food and low for feed and for processing relative to global rice utilization. Therefore, a review must be conducted to increase Korea’s utilization of rice for processing and for feed production.