Global rice production nearly doubled between the 1960s and the 2010s, despite the negative impacts of climate change, according to a new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The study found that management decisions — including expanded irrigation and increased nutrient inputs — played a central role in sustaining rice production and offsetting climate-related losses. The results of the study suggest that future food security will depend not only on environmental conditions, but also on how rice production systems are managed and adapted to changing conditions.
The study by climate, meteorology and atmospheric sciences professor Atul Jain and former graduate student Tzu-Shun Lin combined observations and process-based modeling to examine the factors that shaped global rice production over the past half century. The researchers evaluated how environmental change and agricultural management together influenced rice production across regions and over time. The results of the study are published in the journal Scientific Reports.