rice crisis essay

Rice is both a victim and a villain in terms of the climate crisis. Here’s why

The demand for rice has been consistently rising alongside population growth. Image: Unsplash/th3sand7

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Rice feeds more than half the world – but we are about to enter a major shortage of this staple, putting food security and livelihoods at risk as prices rise.
Yields are falling and crops failing as a result of floods, droughts and severe weather caused by the climate crisis.
Rice is also a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, so more sustainable production and cultivation methods are a priority.

Each day, more than half of the world sits down to a meal of rice .

As a staple food for so many, the amount of rice we produce and consume each year is mind-boggling. Globally, over 165 million hectares – or an area the size of Iran – is given over to rice cultivation .

But we are about to enter a major rice shortage, and we’re already seeing prices significantly up in anticipation of demand . With so many people dependent on the grain, this creates serious food security issues for some of the world’s poorest households.

Growing demand, falling supply

Demand for rice has been steadily climbing as populations expand – between now and 2031, demand is expected to grow 1.1% a year . China and India are the world’s primary producers, although many other countries also grow and export it.

Statistic showing the major rice exporting countries, worldwide.

But it can’t just be grown anywhere – it is a hugely water-intensive crop, grown on flooded fields. It takes 3,000 to 5,000 litres of water to produce 1kg of rice . This makes it particularly prone to increasing and more severe droughts that are occurring because of the climate crisis. Rising temperatures, floods, as well as severe, unpredictable weather as a result of climate change, are also causing harvests to fail.

Two billion people in the world currently suffer from malnutrition and according to some estimates, we need 60% more food to feed the global population by 2050. Yet the agricultural sector is ill-equipped to meet this demand: 700 million of its workers currently live in poverty, and it is already responsible for 70% of the world’s water consumption and 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

New technologies could help our food systems become more sustainable and efficient, but unfortunately the agricultural sector has fallen behind other sectors in terms of technology adoption.

Launched in 2018, the Forum’s Innovation with a Purpose Platform is a large-scale partnership that facilitates the adoption of new technologies and other innovations to transform the way we produce, distribute and consume our food.

With research, increasing investments in new agriculture technologies and the integration of local and regional initiatives aimed at enhancing food security, the platform is working with over 50 partner institutions and 1,000 leaders around the world to leverage emerging technologies to make our food systems more sustainable, inclusive and efficient.

Learn more about Innovation with a Purpose's impact and contact us to see how you can get involved.

This is particularly problematic for the 150 million small-scale rice farmers who rely on the income from their smallholdings to live and eat. It is estimated that climate change may lower rice yields by 15% by 2050.

A global food supply crisis was ranked as the fourth most severe risk for 2023 in the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2023 , which cites the continuing war in Ukraine, the spike in fertilizer prices and the impact of extreme weather on food production.

Figure showing the manifesting risks and their impact on a global level.

The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is working on breeding alternative rice varieties with improved nutritional values, including a low glycaemic index, and providing more dietary fibre. Increased concentrations of some minerals could also help tackle malnutrition and hidden hunger, says the IRRI's Chair of Trustees, Dr Cao Duc Phat .

As well as supporting farmers to produce better yields and develop locally-adapted climate-resistant farming strategies, the IRRI is developing new models to involve women and young people in rice production to help tackle inequalities.

Have you read?

This is how much rice is produced around the world - and the countries that grow the most, food security: this is how china plans to feed its 1.4 billion people, how rural entrepreneurs are driving agritech adoption, a climate crisis victim – and a culprit.

That’s only one side of the story though, because as much as rice cultivation is a victim of the climate crisis, it is also contributing to it.

It makes up 12% of methane emissions and 1.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions . Which is not far off the emissions from fuel burnt by the entire shipping industry . This is largely because the stubble and straw left behind after the rice has been harvested is often burnt or the fields flooded to encourage rapid decomposition, both of which result in significant gas emissions.

Rice cultivation also consumes 40% of global irrigation, accounts for 13% of fertilizer use, and covers 15% of the Earth’s natural wetlands.

Graph showing the methane emissions in rice farming.

Tackling the issue

Sustainable rice production is a focus for scientific innovation, as well as policymakers.

The Global Methane Pledge is a commitment by countries to reduce their emissions of the gas by at least 30% from 2020 levels by 2030. Several countries are targeting rice as part of this pledge.

Viet Nam, for example, which has long operated a ‘rice first’ policy, is now looking to shift away from intensive rice farming as it joins the drive to reduce emissions, and it becomes harder to farm the crop in the country. Through improved irrigation, tillage practices and seeds , as well as tailored fertilizer application and farmer training, it is managing to increase yields and green its rice production. This includes changing the cropping pattern, to rotate different crops, and changing the cropping time to avoid saline water intrusion, which affects some varieties.

There are also improvements to be made during the growing and harvesting processes. This includes breeding and engineering higher yielding or more drought-, flooding-, saline- and pest- tolerant varieties.

Alongside this, efforts are being made to cut pesticide and nitrogen-based fertilizer use, instead using biofertilizers.

Growing techniques such as alternative wetting and drying are also being experimented with as a way to curb water use and emissions. Green and Seed is approaching the problem from another angle, coating seeds in a biodegradable film which affects their water requirements .

Statistic showing the grain production, worldwide.

Some of the biggest rice producers globally have been experimenting with alternative ways of dealing with rice straw and stubble. The Happy Seeder Machine puts mulched stubble back into the field, and has been shown to cut emissions by three-quarters , as well as boost yields. Rolling out machinery like this on the scale required would be a significant investment.

Rice straw also has a number of potential uses , such as for soil improvement, cattle feed and for use in paper or making fibreboard . While some options are being investigated, others are not economically viable because the transportation and production costs make the product more expensive than existing alternatives.

Supporting small-scale production

The large number of small-scale farms is also a significant hindering factor to offering solutions. These farms tend to be characterized by low productivity and high-risk value chains, with limited access to market and low land security. This makes financial investment unattractive given the low margins, high complexity and considerable risk on returns.

RiceAfrika.com is one of a growing number of agritech platforms helping support farmers and communities whose livelihoods are reliant on harvests. It is using technology to connect rice growers and other stakeholders across the rice value chain.

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The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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Science News

Rice feeds half the world. climate change’s droughts and floods put it at risk.

Scientists and growers will need to innovate to save the staple crop

In a severe drought, rice farmers in California’s Sacramento Valley have to leave some of their fields unplanted (upper left).

CALIFORNIA RICE COMMISSION, BRIAN BAER

The top rice producers are in Asia

The world’s top rice producer is China, at 214 million metric tons. India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam are next. In Africa, Nigeria (6.8 million) is the largest producer. Brazil (11.8 million) and the United States (10.2 million) are also top producers, according to 2018 data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

Worldwide rice production, 2018

a map showing where rice is grown around the world

Saltwater woes

Most rice plants are grown in fields, or paddies, that are typically filled with around 10 centimeters of water. This constant, shallow inundation helps stave off weeds and pests. But if water levels suddenly get too high, such as during a flash flood, the rice plants can die.

Striking the right balance between too much and too little water can be a struggle for many rice farmers, especially in Asia, where over 90 percent of the world’s rice is produced. Large river deltas in South and Southeast Asia, such as the Mekong River Delta in Vietnam, offer flat, fertile land that is ideal for farming rice. But these low-lying areas are sensitive to swings in the water cycle. And because deltas sit on the coast, drought brings another threat: salt.

Salt’s impact is glaringly apparent in the Mekong River Delta. When the river runs low, saltwater from the South China Sea encroaches upstream into the delta, where it can creep into the soils and irrigation canals of the delta’s rice fields.

a farmer's hand holding dead rice plants being pulled from a paddy

“If you irrigate rice with water that’s too salty, especially at certain [growing] stages, you are at risk of losing 100 percent of the crop,” says Bjoern Sander, a climate change specialist at the International Rice Research Institute, or IRRI, who is based in Vietnam.

In a 2015 and 2016 drought, saltwater reached up to 90 kilometers inland, destroying 405,000 hectares of rice paddies. In 2019 and 2020, drought and saltwater intrusion returned, damaging 58,000 hectares of rice. With regional temperatures on the rise, these conditions in Southeast Asia are expected to intensify and become more widespread , according to a 2020 report by the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.

Then comes the whiplash: Each year from around April to October, the summer monsoon turns on the faucet over swaths of South and Southeast Asia. About 80 percent of South Asia’s rainfall is dumped during this season and can cause destructive flash floods.

Bangladesh is one of the most flood-prone rice producers in the region, as it sits at the mouths of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers. In June 2020, monsoon rains flooded about 37 percent of the country, damaging about 83,000 hectares of rice fields, according to Bangladesh’s Ministry of Agriculture. And the future holds little relief; South Asia’s monsoon rainfall is expected to intensify with climate change , researchers reported June 4 in Science Advances .

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Water highs and lows aren’t the entire story. Rice generally grows best in places with hot days and cooler nights. But in many rice-growing regions, temperatures are getting too hot. Rice plants become most vulnerable to heat stress during the middle phase of their growth, before they begin building up the meat in their grains. Extreme heat, above 35˚ C, can diminish grain counts in just weeks, or even days. In April in Bangladesh, two consecutive days of 36˚ C destroyed thousands of hectares of rice.

In South and Southeast Asia, such extreme heat events are expected to become common with climate change, researchers reported in July in Earth’s Future . And there are other, less obvious, consequences for rice in a warming world.

One of the greatest threats is bacterial blight, a fatal plant disease caused by the bacterium Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae . The disease, most prevalent in Southeast Asia and rising in Africa, has been reported to have cut rice yields by up to 70 percent in a single season.

“We know that with higher temperature, the disease becomes worse,” says Jan Leach, a plant pathologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Most of the genes that help rice combat bacterial blight seem to become less effective when temperatures rise, she explains.

And as the world warms, new frontiers may open for rice pathogens. An August study in Nature Climate Change suggests that as global temperatures rise, rice plants (and many other crops) at northern latitudes, such as those in China and the United States, will be at higher risk of pathogen infection .

Meanwhile, rising temperatures may bring a double-edged arsenic problem. In a 2019 study in Nature Communications , E. Marie Muehe, a biogeochemist at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Germany, who was then at Stanford University, showed that under future climate conditions, more arsenic will infiltrate rice plants . High arsenic levels boost the health risk of eating the rice and impair plant growth.

Leaching in

When grown in a greenhouse at 5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures with elevated carbon dioxide levels (representing a future climate), California rice varieties absorbed more of a type of highly toxic arsenic from the soil, raising the rice’s arsenic levels above European Union safety thresholds.

Arsenic levels in rice grains

a chart showing arsenic in rice under different climate conditions

Arsenic naturally occurs in soils, though in most regions the toxic element is present at very low levels. Rice, however, is particularly susceptible to arsenic contamination, because it is grown in flooded conditions. Paddy soils lack oxygen, and the microbes that thrive in this anoxic environment liberate arsenic from the soil. Once the arsenic is in the water, rice plants can draw it in through their roots. From there, the element is distributed throughout the plants’ tissues and grains.

Muehe and her team grew a Californian variety of rice in a local low-arsenic soil inside climate-controlled greenhouses. Increasing the temperature and carbon dioxide levels to match future climate scenarios enhanced the activity of the microbes living in the rice paddy soils and increased the amount of arsenic in the grains, Muehe says. And importantly, rice yields diminished. In the low-arsenic Californian soil under future climate conditions, rice yield dropped 16 percent.

According to the researchers, models that forecast the future production of rice don’t account for the impact of arsenic on harvest yields. What that means, Muehe says, is that current projections are overestimating how much rice will be produced in the future.

Managing rice’s thirst

From atop an embankment that edges one of his fields, Rystrom watches water gush from a pipe, flooding a paddy packed with rice plants. “On a year like this, we decided to pump,” he says.

Able to tap into groundwater, Rystrom left only about 10 percent of his fields unplanted this growing season. “If everybody was pumping from the ground to farm rice every year,” he admits, it would be unsustainable.

One widely studied, drought-friendly method is “alternate wetting and drying,” or intermittent flooding, which involves flooding and draining rice paddies on one- to 10-day cycles, as opposed to maintaining a constant inundation. This practice can cut water use by up to 38 percent without sacrificing yields. It also stabilizes the soil for harvesting and lowers arsenic levels in rice by bringing more oxygen into the soils, disrupting the arsenic-releasing microbes. If tuned just right, it may even slightly improve crop yields.

But the water-saving benefits of this method are greatest when it is used on highly permeable soils, such as those in Arkansas and other parts of the U.S. South, which normally require lots of water to keep flooded, says Bruce Linquist, a rice specialist at the University of California Cooperative Extension. The Sacramento Valley’s clay-rich soils don’t drain well, so the water savings where Rystrom farms are minimal; he doesn’t use the method.

Building embankments, canal systems and reservoirs can also help farmers dampen the volatility of the water cycle. But for some, the solution to rice’s climate-related problems lies in enhancing the plant itself.

Better breeds

The world’s largest collection of rice is stored near the southern rim of Laguna de Bay in the Philippines, in the city of Los Baños. There, the International Rice Genebank, managed by IRRI, holds over 132,000 varieties of rice seeds from farms around the globe.

Upon arrival in Los Baños, those seeds are dried and processed, placed in paper bags and moved into two storage facilities — one cooled to 2˚ to 4˚ C from which seeds can be readily withdrawn, and another chilled to –20˚ C for long-term storage. To be extra safe, backup seeds are kept at the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation in Fort Collins, Colo., and the Svalbard Global Seed Vault tucked inside a mountain in Norway.

All this is done to protect the biodiversity of rice and amass a trove of genetic material that can be used to breed future generations of rice. Farmers no longer use many of the stored varieties, instead opting for new higher-yield or sturdier breeds. Nevertheless, solutions to climate-related problems may be hidden in the DNA of those older strains. “Scientists are always looking through that collection to see if genes can be discovered that aren’t being used right now,” says Ronald, of UC Davis. “That’s how Sub1 was discovered.”

two people in blue jumpsuits looking at rice seeds on shelves

The Sub1 gene enables rice plants to endure prolonged periods completely submerged underwater. It was discovered in 1996 in a traditional variety of rice grown in the Indian state of Orissa, and through breeding has been incorporated into varieties cultivated in flood-prone regions of South and Southeast Asia. Sub1 -wielding varieties, called “scuba rice,” can survive for over two weeks entirely submerged, a boon for farmers whose fields are vulnerable to flash floods.

Some researchers are looking beyond the genetic variability preserved in rice gene banks, searching instead for useful genes from other species, including plants and bacteria. But inserting genes from one species into another, or genetic modification, remains controversial. The most famous example of genetically modified rice is Golden Rice, which was intended as a partial solution to childhood malnutrition. Golden Rice grains are enriched in beta-carotene, a precursor to vitamin A. To create the rice, researchers spliced a gene from a daffodil and another from a bacterium into an Asian variety of rice.

Three decades have passed since its initial development, and only a handful of countries have deemed Golden Rice safe for consumption. On July 23, the Philippines became the first country to approve the commercial production of Golden Rice. Abdelbagi Ismail, principal scientist at IRRI, blames the slow acceptance on public perception and commercial interests opposed to genetically modified organisms , or GMOs ( SN: 2/6/16, p. 22 ).

Looking ahead, it will be crucial for countries to embrace GM rice, Ismail says. Developing nations, particularly those in Africa that are becoming more dependent on the crop, would benefit greatly from the technology, which could produce new varieties faster than breeding and may allow researchers to incorporate traits into rice plants that conventional breeding cannot. If Golden Rice were to gain worldwide acceptance, it could open the door for new genetically modified climate- and disease-resilient varieties, Ismail says. “It will take time,” he says. “But it will happen.”

Climate change is a many-headed beast, and each rice-growing region will face its own particular set of problems. Solving those problems will require collaboration between local farmers, government officials and the international community of researchers.

“I want my kids to be able to have a shot at this,” Rystrom says. “You have to do a lot more than just farm rice. You have to think generations ahead.”

Climate-resilient rice

To keep rice bowls around the world full, researchers breed new varieties of rice that can endure stresses like drought, floods and salt.

Sahbhagi Dhan : Traditional rice varieties take 120 to 150 days to harvest and require four irrigations. Sahbhagi Dhan is a drought-tolerant variety harvested after 105 days and just two irrigations. In normal conditions, it produces about twice as much rice (four to five metric tons per hectare) as other local varieties in India. Under drought conditions, it produces one to two metric tons per hectare; local varieties produce none.

Scuba rice : Sub1 , a submergence-tolerance gene, has been bred into scuba rice varieties. Rice normally dies after three to four days of total submergence — many varieties will exhaust themselves to death trying to quickly grow to the water’s surface. Sub1 varieties (shown), however, refrain from this frenzied growth spurt, and can withstand over two weeks underwater, able to survive the sudden floods of the summer monsoon.

Salt-tolerant rice : Made by inserting an area of the genome called Saltol, salt-tolerant rice varieties are better able to regulate the amount of sodium ions, toxic in high amounts, in their tissues. Saltol has been incorporated into high-yield varieties throughout the world.

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The rice tariffication law and its role in the current rice crisis

In 2018, the country underwent a rice crisis. By October, retail prices of well-milled rice (WMR) reached almost Php 50 per kilo, up 14% over prices in the previous year. Prices for regular-milled rice (RMR) rose by 16%. This coincided with the depletion of National Food Authority (NFA) stocks, delays in import arrivals, and a dip in local production. It was only when then President Rodrigo Duterte ordered NFA to immediately import and allow private traders to bring in rice did rice prices stabilize.

The current situation is eerily similar. NFA stocks are down to just one day’s national consumption. Entering the 3-month lean period in July 2023, over-all inventories (held by farm households, private traders and NFA) sufficed for only about 60 days. Rice from abroad was supposed to cover the 30-day gap, but the war in Ukraine, climatic disturbances and the Indian export ban rendered rice importation expensive and risky. As stocks began thinning out in August and September, prices ascended to levels beyond those in 2018.

The 2018 rice crisis triggered the rapid passage of the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL) in February 2019. Blaming government import controls, RTL’s proponents argued that the private sector could manage the rice market more efficiently. As a result, NFA’s importation, regulatory and price stabilization functions were abolished. The agency was relegated to buffer stocking for calamities. The private sector was given free and unlimited rein over rice importations.

Imports immediately surged to 3.17 million tons in 2019, from previous annual levels of 2 million tons or less. In 2022, they registered an all-time high of 3.85 million tons. These voluminous inflows, especially during local harvests, led to severe drops in palay prices. Between 2019 and 2021, farmers’ incomes declined by Php 4,500 per hectare per season, compared to normal pre-RTL figures.

Low farmgate prices disincentivized farmers; more so, when fertilizer and fuel costs rose starting in 2021. While improving slightly, total rice output did not keep pace with growth in population and demand. Our self-sufficiency ratio, or the percentage of total food and other requirements produced by our farmers, decreased from 90% prior to RTL to 79% in 2021. We became increasingly dependent on foreign suppliers. Rice imports accounted for an average of 19% of our total annual supply during the RTL period, compared to only 14% before that.

Meanwhile, RTL’s promised benefits to consumers in terms of lower rice prices did not materialize. Studies by the Federation of Free Farmers show that net savings to consumers in the first three years of RTL amounted to a measly ₱52 per person per year. Importers and traders pocketed the gains from cheaper imports, even as many undervalued their shipments to reduce their tariff obligations. Many now call the RTL as the “Rice Traders Liberalization Law”.

The country’s growing reliance on imports, coupled with our farmers’ diminished capacity to satisfy our rice requirements, are the proximate causes of the current crisis (extremely tight supplies and prohibitive prices of rice). While the proponents of RTL may not have intended this to happen, they bear responsibility for hastily pushing for its enactment and for peddling their faulty theories and bloated projections about the virtues of full-scale liberalization and deregulation of our rice markets.

According to the Department of Agriculture (DA), as of August 1 this year, the country’s rice stocks had fallen to 39 days level of consumption. This meant that rice good for an additional 21 days of consumption – about 750,000 metric tons – needed to be sourced either from imports or early palay harvests (before the main harvests could start replenishing inventories from late September onwards).

Unfortunately, imports did not come in as expected. As international prices increased, foreign suppliers started reneging on contracts. Local importers themselves scaled down their imports; a few reportedly cancelled their orders. The raiding and padlocking of warehouses of supposed hoarders, and the subsequent imposition of price ceilings on major rice grades, aggravated the problem and caused importers to adopt a wait-and-see stance.

Throughout all this, government was left almost powerless to control events. It could have stepped in early to augment supplies once it detected traders’ reluctance to import. However, RTL specifically prohibited NFA from importing. RTL’s implementing rules do allow the Philippine International Trade Corporation to undertake importation “ only in the event of (a) rice supply shortage ”. However, the DA repeatedly claimed that there was no rice shortage.

RTL also severely curtailed government’s ability to monitor the rice industry. It removed NFA’s powers to license market players, inspect warehouses, and track stock movements.

This led to essentially fishing expeditions by law enforcers and some legislators to apprehend alleged hoarders, and the recent imposition of price ceilings to ferret out unidentified profiteers! The price caps eventually led retailers to lose money, government to spend money to compensate the retailers, and farmers to suffer from drops in palay prices, with no hoarder or profiteerer being apprehended so far.

The same economic agencies and interests that advocated RTL’s passage are now recommending tariff cuts on rice imports from 35% to 10%, ostensibly to bring down rice prices and control inflation. True to form, they again look abroad to salvage the situation – which their pro-importation policy bias created in the first place.

A tariff reduction will only further discourage our farmers from redoubling their productive efforts. It will. make our food security even more dependent on external players and factors. Nor is there any guarantee that importers and traders will pass on any tariff savings to consumers.

Before humoring these economic theorists and interests again, let us hold them to account for the harm that their wrong prescriptions have inflicted on millions of our small farmers and poor consumers. Let us not allow them to repeat the same mistakes and force others to pay for them.

If El Nino persists until next year, and international prices remain high, we could end up in an even worse predicament, come the lean months of 2024.

There is still some time to prepare for this contingency. We should provide our farmers with the right price incentive in the coming harvest season, so that they will scale up production during the next production cycle. We should put in place the necessary post-harvest facilities to reduce losses and enhance the quality and market value of their produce. We can give farmers the option to store their harvests in idle NFA warehouses, borrow money against their deposits, and then sell them in the open market when commodity prices improve. And we can set up systems that will enable farmers and their organizations to sell their products directly to consumers – with government, together with the private sector, providing logistical support.

Most important, we should renew trust and confidence in our own farmers, and exorcise the myth that open markets are the best guarantee for our food security.

Raul Montemayor is the national manager of the Federation of Free Farmers.

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Combating the rice crisis

Another rice crisis recently emerged as the cost of rice soared due to various reasons. This problem is underscored by a troubling statistic—in September, the cost of rice increased by 17.9 percent, reaching its highest point in 14 years, contributing 2.8 percent to the whole inflation rate for that month. This increase put significant financial pressure on Filipino families’ budgets, 13.1 percent of which accounts for rice, and more difficult for poor households who spend up to 30 percent of their income on rice.

The nature and causes of the current rice crisis are multifaceted, with several key factors at play. Extreme weather conditions, including typhoons and droughts, have affected local rice production, leading to lower yields and reduced supply. Concurrently, distribution gaps disrupted the market availability of rice. This issue was further worsened by high transport costs, primarily driven by the soaring fuel prices resulting from the Ukraine war and the decision of large oil producers to reduce oil output. Additionally, fluctuating international rice prices have had a ripple effect, influencing local prices.

To help stabilize rice prices, we propose the following short- and long-term recommendations for the executive and legislative branches:

Executive. 1. Encourage greater private sector participation in the rice supply chain, particularly conglomerates who can help enhance the efficiency of the rice distribution system essential to fight disruptions that drive up rice prices. These corporations can invest in improving storage facilities, strengthening transportation infrastructure, and establishing direct marketing channels in collaboration with farmers.

2. Closer collaboration between government agencies. For instance, the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the National Food Authority can work together to develop a rice procurement and distribution plan, specifically made for this current crisis, that ensures that farmers get a fair price for their produce and that consumers can buy affordable rice. The DA and the Department of Trade and Industry can also develop a rice market development plan that connects farmers with buyers.

3. Develop more agriculturists, particularly focusing on their role in helping farmers enhance productivity at the farm level which can then help cut rice prices and ensure affordability. Traditional farmers’ hesitance to adopt new agricultural technologies, including fertilizers and hybrid rice varieties, has contributed to the rice crisis.

4. At the local government level, promote a cofinancing mechanism that incentivizes local government units (LGUs) to provide more funding to rice programs. Under cofinancing, each peso an LGU invests in irrigation, post-harvest facilities, or other programs to support rice farmers will receive two to three times more matching fund from the national government.

5. Continue implementing the rice tariffication law (RTL), which was created to combat the rice crisis a few years ago. RTL facilitates the importation of rice, helping offset domestic shortages, and stabilize prices. Moreover, encouraging active participation of the private sector in rice trading promotes market competition and discourages price manipulation.

6. The President should convene and preside over the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council, at least monthly, to closely monitor the progress of important bills and effectively address the top concerns of Filipinos such as this rice crisis.

Legislative. 1. Reconsider the proposal to lower the tariff rate on rice from 35 percent to 10 percent. We advocate for a dynamic approach that adjusts tariffs based on international rice market conditions. When global rice prices decline, lowering tariffs can stimulate economic growth and ease consumer burdens. However, it is crucial to recognize the inherent volatility of international rice prices. If prices trend upward again, we must be prepared to reinstate higher tariffs to protect domestic farmers.

2. Amend the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law. This can promote efficient land use, increased productivity through modernized farming practices, crop diversification, economies of scale through consolidated farms, improved rural infrastructure, better access to credit, market regulation, and comprehensive support for smallholder farmers.

3. Amend the warehouse receipts law. While this applies to all crops, enhancing the efficiency and transparency of warehouses can reduce post-harvest losses and ensure that crops such as rice stocks are stored under optimal conditions.

4. Involve pertinent oversight committees in both the House and Senate. Their oversight and scrutiny will provide an additional layer of accountability, helping to maintain transparency in implementing these measures.

Taking these decisive actions to mitigate the rice crisis is of paramount importance to ensure a sufficient rice supply, proper and efficient rice distribution, stabilize rice prices, manage inflation, and alleviate poverty in the Philippines. When executed in a timely manner, these recommendations will address the current challenges effectively and help avert another rice nightmare in the future.

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Gary B. Teves served as finance secretary under the Arroyo administration.

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[OPINION] Solving our ‘unli’ rice crisis

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This is AI generated summarization, which may have errors. For context, always refer to the full article.

[OPINION] Solving our ‘unli’ rice crisis

Practically every Philippine president, save for Erap Estrada due to his short stint, has had to face a rice crisis . This happens when supply shortages combine with steep price increases enough to cause public anger, merit a congressional investigation, and result in a frenzy of finger-pointing in and among government agencies.

Eventually supply stabilizes albeit at a higher price, congressmen and senators get tired berating National Food Authority (NFA) officials and rice traders, and some poor scapegoat is dressed down or gets the ax. People calm down. Until the next crisis comes. A chronic problem Analysts often point out 4 factors behind the chronic crisis of our rice industry. One is high population growth. Simply put, the increase in the number of Filipinos eating rice outpaces any increase in rice production. Unfortunately, this will be a given for the next few years since a country’s population rate takes decades to change. Two is low yield coupled with high cost of production. While our rice-producing neighbors like Vietnam and Thailand produce an average of 5 to 8 tons per hectare at a cost of P5 to P9 per kilo, our farmers produce a lower average of 3 to 6 tons per hectare at a higher cost of P11 to P14 per kilo. On top of that, most rice farmers have to share their income with landowners, traders, and money lenders who all charge usurious rates for land, farm inputs, and interest. Because of the difficulties faced by our rice farmers, many have opted to just sell out to land developers eager to convert their farms to residential or industrial uses. Low yield and high production cost, coupled with the decreasing land area devoted to palay, is a triple whammy for rice production. In fact, palay’s share in the economy’s gross value added has been falling by 10.4% annually for the last 4 years, indicating a dangerous trend of shrinking production. Three is hoarding and price manipulation. Rice traders act like a cartel and, in connivance with officials of the NFA, Department of Agriculture (DA), Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), and law agencies, are able to constrict supply at will, creating artificial shortages and price spikes. The NFA, whose mandate is to ensure national food security and stabilize supply and prices of staple cereals both in the farm and consumer levels, has become a ghost of its original self. It’s capacity to purchase at least 10% of total palay production is down to a mere 1% to 2%, even less in some years, making no dent in farmgate or retail prices.

The “bukbok issue” highlights not just the NFA’s incompetence but the folly of rice importation as the simple, go-to solution to the chronic rice crisis.

Four is our flawed importation policy. With expensive local supply unable to cope up with demand and cartels manipulating the market to keep prices high, a stop gap measure has always been to just import cheaper rice. But massive rice importation, including of smuggled rice, has become the rule. Despite this, imports have failed to impact significantly on supply and prices. In many instances, imports arrive late, coinciding with the harvest season. This tends to depress local farmgate prices, serving as another disincentive for farmers to plant palay. Worse, the NFA has served as a mere facilitator of private sector importation, further reducing its capacity to influence prices. It has actually connived with private traders in profiteering operations involving smuggled rice. Short term solutions to a long term problem The systemic, deep-seated problems afflicting our rice industry require equally systemic and radical reforms. Sadly, we tend to act only during the most acute stages of the crisis, by which time we are left with limited, stop-gap options, namely price controls, emergency importation, and the public shaming of NFA officials and the Binondo rice cartel.

The response to the present crisis is typical of this “too little, too late” approach. The NFA and the DA identified the looming supply problem middle of last year. The default solution was rice importation, with the debate on whether to do it government to government or via the private sector delaying the process, leading to the early depletion of the NFA’s buffer stock. The “bukbok” issue highlights not just the NFA’s incompetence but the folly of rice importation as the simple, go-to solution to the chronic rice crisis. The logical conclusion of such thinking is the harebrained proposal by no less than the secretary of agriculture to legalize rice smuggling. In the mid-1990s, government economists were even proposing to convert rice fields to cut flower farms to maximize income and then just import rice from Thailand or Vietnam. This prompted farmers to ask if you could cook sinangag na sunflower for breakfast. Yet the evidence suggests that rice importation does not necessarily lead to lower retail prices. As IBON Foundation notes, the years of highest importation are also the years of the highest price increases. But even if the imports come on time and help reduce prices, that still would not address the problem of having to rely on imports for our most important staple crop that, in the early ’80s, we actually grew in abundance enough to export. The unli rice challenge You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or an agriculture secretary to see what needs to be done. Long term solutions are actually contained in countless policy papers, program designs and pieces of legislation. The problem is that no government has had the perseverance and political will to actually see them through.

The following goals are key: First, increase rice yield to keep up with population growth while lowering the cost of production. It is simply not true that we can’t compete with our ASEAN neighbors. We are endowed with the same resources and weather conditions like Thailand and Vietnam. What we lack are the infrastructure, farmer support and industry development programs that they have put in place, many of which were learned, ironically, from Filipino scientists and technologists from UP Los Baños.

Everyone claims that imported rice is cheaper but it’s still sold at a premium price way beyond the price of local rice. Such profiteering by rice traders and importers must be checked.

To achieve this goal, 4 things have to be done: 1) roll out massive and adequately funded projects and programs to provide farm inputs, technology and machinery, affordable financing, research and development to our rice farmers; 2) rehabilitate existing irrigation systems and construct new ones to double or even triple the yield of existing farms; 3) stop the conversion of agricultural land, especially irrigated rice land, to non-agricultural purposes; and 4) reconfigure and complete the agrarian reform program to provide free land to qualified rice farmers and dismantle the remaining feudal structures and mindsets that discourage them from tilling the land and adopting better farming technologies. All these presuppose good management, transparency, accountability and focus from the lowest to highest levels of government. If only half of the energy and focus given to the drug war were given to agriculture and rice production, we would already be better off. Second imperative is to dismantle the cartel and establish policies and mechanisms to prevent cartel-like behavior and other abuses of market power. To do this, the NFA would have to be revamped into a pro-active agency with the capacity to buy palay at competitive rates and in enough volume to actually influence supply and prices. From procuring a mere 1% to 2% of local palay, regulating rice imports and maintining a 90-day buffer stock, the NFA would have to drastically increase its palay procurement program, directly import rice on a government-to-government basis to keep costs low, ensure fair farm gate prices and serve as a check on private sector profiteering. This is easier said than done. The rice cartel is a rich, powerful and well-entrenched lobby group. Its allies in government include not just the politicians they fund but the neoliberal technocrats who still believe in the myth of the free market. No one would be happier if the NFA were abolished and import restrictions lifted than the members of the rice cartel. Third is to supplement local production by importing rice at the right amount at the right time. Admittedly in the short term, we can’t do without importation. What is important however is that imports should not flood the market to the detriment of our local farmers. Limiting imports to just the lean months or to meet actual shortages is essential. In this light, the pending rice tarrification bill in Congress that does away with quantitative restrictions on rice is dangerous. Absent the above-mentioned reforms, allowing the unlimited importation of rice, even if slapped with high import taxes, will adversely impact on our rice industry, including close to 20 million Filipinos dependent on it. A study by the Philippine Institute of Development Studies estimates a 29% reduction in farmers’ income due to rice tarrification. Fourth is to regulate the price of rice. It is frustrating for our farmers that even as retail prices are skyrocketing, the farm gate price for palay has hardly changed. Worse, everyone claims that imported rice is cheaper but it’s still sold at a premium price way beyond the price of local rice. Such profiteering by rice traders and importers must be checked. All these things can’t be done by the private sector using free market mechanisms. The government will have to play a central and overarching role. And although that may seem sacriligious to the neolibalist trio who hold the reins of economic policy – Sonny Dominguez, Ernie Pernia, and Ben Diokno – it’s a reality that we all have to face. Unless we come up with such long term, radical solutions, we will be reeling time and again with the same problems. The worst thing that can happen out of the current crisis is that we don’t learn our lesson. Again. – Rappler.com

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Philippine E-Journals

Home ⇛ luz y saber ⇛ vol. 2 no. 1 (2008), the rice crisis in the philippines.

Jomar H. Mendoza

Discipline: Agriculture

The Philippines is experiencing an unusual problem – high price of rice. Unusual because the Philippines is an agricultural country endowed with plenty of natural resources, yet it is now the world’s largest importer of rice. What happened? Why are we experiencing this problem? Will rice depart from Filipino tables?

The world still grows plenty of rice but the crisis is caused by several factors. In the Philippines, the government assures that there is enough supply for every Filipino. This, of course, is in the form of imported rice as rice production in the country is not enough to feed the entire population.

The Philippines has been importing rice since the Spanish period. This continued through the American regime, and still continues until today. The long queues of people buying rice are not new. The same scenario happened in the 1930s, 1970s and in the middle of 1990s brought about by weather disaster, mismanagement and corruption. At present, the crisis is also brought about by abandonment, conversion and reclassification of lands. Whatever the reasons for such, one thing is certain – the use of land for rice is diminishing.

Several measures are being undertaken by the government to solve the alarming crisis. However, real, thorough and long-lasting solutions must be the goal, not just the government, but for all Filipinos to solve this crisis. The goal should not just be half cup of rice; it should be rice on every Filipino table.

ISSN 2244-6338 (Online)

ISSN 1908 9147 (Print)

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The Unbearable Heat of Prisons in Summer

L ike many people, I knew nothing about the heat crisis in U.S. prisons for most of my life. I first learned of the crisis in early 2016, when I started teaching at a maximum security prison in South Texas. I taught creative writing there for almost seven years, and every summer my students would write about the daily torture they endured, locked in a facility without air conditioning, where temperatures often topped 110 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat gave them searing headaches and blurred vision, dizziness and nausea, as well as a despair that their society could allow such cruel treatment, ignoring their basic human rights. It was not just a physical torture, but also a psychological punishment, a message that they were subhuman. Such temperatures would violate animal cruelty laws , but they didn’t deserve this dignity.

My students were far from alone in this suffering. Every summer, people in many U.S. prisons are forced to take drastic measures: flooding their toilets to lie down in the slightly cooler water, wrapping wet rags around their limbs, spending their meager prison wages (usually less than a dollar an hour) to buy fans that actually increase the problem, circulating rather than cooling the stifling air. Many stop taking their medications, as this would put added strain on their hearts, which can prove lethal if added to the coronary strain of the heat. Now and then people do die, usually of cardiac incidents, though prison authorities often deny this is related to the heat torture. As a 2023 study from academic journal PLOS ONE has shown , prison suicide rates increase after heatwaves as well. One might think the temperature in the cells would lower at night, but it often barely goes down .

My purpose here is not to dwell on the basic facts of the prison heat crisis, which have been reported so well elsewhere . Though opinions differ (often by political party) on what counts as an “ethical” prison, there’s no denying that high temperatures can pose health risks . Some hard-right cynics might still deny the reality of global warming, but you only need a thermometer to know that our prisons get hotter every year. Around 44 states lack universal air conditioning in their prisons, many the hottest states in the nation; in Texas prisons alone, according to a 2022 study by Brown University researchers, there are an average of 14 heat-related deaths per year. No jury ever sentences a defendant to heat torture, but this is the punishment that hundreds of thousands must face. Some have received a death sentence for as little as cashing a bad check .

With its rising number of deaths, Texas prisons have received a specific censure from the U.N. Convention Against Torture. The U.N. called the prisons “unbearably hot” and pressed for “urgent measures.” Very few have yet been taken. Nor is this issue confined to Southern states: many Northeastern prisons lack air conditioning, and a 2023 study of their state prisons by the Prison Policy Initiative found that deaths increased around 21% from two-day heat waves.

Read More: Air Conditioning is a Human Right.’ Heat-Related Prison Deaths Are Rising Due to Climate Change

These facts are tragic enough, but there are wider implications to the crisis. In her groundbreaking book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness , legal scholar Michelle Alexander wrote about the troubling demographics of U.S. prisons, which incarcerate minorities at a much higher rate than the white population. “The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid,” Alexander explained. “These stark racial disparities cannot be explained by rates of drug crime. Studies show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates. …In some states, black men have been admitted to prison on drug charges at rates 20 to 50 times greater than those of white men.”

This excessive imprisonment of minorities began in the 1860s, just after the purported “end of slavery.” In Tennessee, for instance, the prison population under slavery was less than 5% Black; a year after the Civil War, that number had jumped to 52%; by 1891, it was 75% . Numbers like this could be seen across the South, and the purpose was not only punitive: the state governments colluded with business and landowners in a practice called “ convict leasing ,” which consigned large segments of the Black population to a slavery in all but name .

It is common for white Americans (often raised on simplistic history texts) to think that injustices like this stopped in the 1960s, with the victories of the Civil Rights Movement. In fact, the most shocking prison statistics come from the 1980s-2000s, when the “War on Drugs” swelled our penal population from around 300,000 to over 2 million, the highest in the world. Not surprisingly, much of that rise came from minority drug convictions. For Black men born in 1981, 1 in 3 can expect incarceration; in 2001, 1 in 5. Despite reforms, Black Americans are still imprisoned at around five times the rate of whites, and over nine times in supposedly liberal states like California, Connecticut, Maine, and New Jersey. Once released, they then face legalized discrimination in voting, housing, employment, education, and public benefits--the restricted rights of “second-class” citizens, not unsimilar to life in an apartheid state. As of December 2022, the U.S. imprisoned 1.67 million people , just 15 thousand less than the world leader, China, whose population is over a billion larger than ours. As Alexander wrote, “The American penal system has emerged as a system of social control unparalleled in world history.”

These racial statistics should reframe the discussion of the prison heat crisis. Yes, we should install air conditioning in every U.S. prison; yes, we should pass federal laws for prison temperature standards. But we must also examine the insidious patterns of racism in our nation, where we not only incarcerate a disproportionate number of minority citizens, but then submit them to month after month of literal torture, living conditions that would qualify as war crimes and violate articles of the Geneva Convention. In the words of one union president for Texas correctional officers, “We’re supposed to run prisons, not concentration camps.”

Over the past few years, we have decried the suffering of Palestinian and Ukrainian citizens; we have criticized Russia and Israel for their human rights abuses. Without question, this outcry is necessary and just. But at the same time, we have ignored the hundreds of thousands who suffer from heat torture in our prisons, many from minority groups that have been targeted and oppressed for all of U.S. history.

That this causes no real scandal is a flagrant sign of our racism. Every year, there is a trickle of news stories about the crisis (John Oliver ran a notable segment two years ago) but our politicians do little to oppose the torture of the systematically oppressed. President Biden’s Build Back Better Bill—rightly lauded as a major achievement—never included a single dollar to support the upgrade of jails and detention centers, even before conservatives slashed its budget. This was not even a talking point for most progressives. As a nation, it’s clear we like to pick and choose which Amendments matter to us. The Second Amendment is a rallying cry for many, but the Eighth—against cruel and unusual punishment—can barely find a voice. The reason for this is simple: the victims of torture rarely finance political campaigns.

In a moment like this one, where human rights abuses fill our newsfeeds, nearly all of us feel powerless and overwhelmed. But we are not as voiceless as those who suffer in our prisons, and prison reform is possible with enough pressure on our politicians. After a sanction from the Justice Department, Mississippi began last year to install air conditioning in all its prisons; in Texas this year, the state House passed a bill to spend $545 million on prison air conditioning (though this was then gutted by the State Senate). With the many issues that press upon us, it is easy to forget the most vulnerable in our society, especially when these people are behind bars, kept out of sight. But I ask you to remember the words of Tona Southards Naranjo, whose son, Jon Southards, died in a Texas prison this summer from a heat-related heart attack: “We need desperate change, and we need it today, this hour. They’re cooking our babies alive.”

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‘The Age of Magical Overthinking’ tries to pinpoint our mental health crisis

Amanda montell casts a wide net in her new essay collection. maybe too wide..

Every generation has its own crisis, the linguist and podcaster Amanda Montell writes. In the 1960s and ’70s, young Americans organized against “physical tyrannies” such as voter suppression and workplace discrimination. But times have changed.

The 21st century brought a shift in our attention from external threats to internal ones, Montell says. Rates of anxiety and depression among U.S. teens and adults have spiked. Loneliness is a public health threat . We’re glued to our phones, alienated from loved ones and surrounded by misinformation.

People everywhere, Montell writes, are facing a crisis of the mind.

From this grim landscape emerges “ The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality ,” Montell’s third book and a sweeping look at mental health, behavioral science, misinformation and online culture in the 2020s. In it, she argues that the ills of the internet era are best explained by looking back on humanity’s history, when our minds developed shortcuts to improve our odds of survival. Those shortcuts are called cognitive biases, and they may lead us to do strange things like fall for a conspiracy theory or accept mental health advice from an untrained influencer .

Montell leads us through an engaging roundup of “21st century derangement,” from celebrity worship to tradwife discourse , examining how cognitive biases may contribute. But by positioning her work as a response to America’s broad struggle with mental health, Montell promises more than she delivers. Rather than focusing on a tour of our shared cognitive glitches, she juggles meta-commentary on such vast topics as the modern mind and the internet, dropping balls along the way.

The book opens with an account of Montell’s struggles with anxiety and overwhelm, as well as the steps she took to feel better. “My most cinematic attempt at mental rehab involved picking herbs on a farm in Sicily under a light-pollution-free sky,” she writes.

Eventually, she had an aha moment: The same cognitive biases she encountered while researching toxic social groups for her second book, “ Cultish ,” could explain why the internet age felt like a “mass head trip.” Glutted with more information in a day than we can ever hope to process, we fall back on mental habits developed when humans were simpler creatures, Montell writes. For example, social media celebrity worship could be fueled by the “halo effect,” where we assume a person with one good quality (writing hit pop songs) has other good qualities (a perfectly tuned moral compass). Or perhaps we spend hours comparing ourselves with other people on Instagram because the “zero-sum bias” has convinced us that life is a game of winners and losers.

Montell backs up her connections in many instances with nods to evolutionary biology. For early humans, it made sense to attach ourselves to the strongest and most powerful, so now we glom onto Taylor Swift or Charli XCX. Resources like mates and status were limited in ancient human communities, Montell notes, so it’s natural that we view hot people on Instagram as immediate threats to our survival.

Montell finds examples of cognitive bias in internet culture flash points, such as the millennial obsession with New Age therapy-speak. Faced with big problems, such as anxiety or depression, our minds seek big explanations, such as childhood trauma or a scarcity mind-set, rather than examining all the smaller problems at play.

In other spots, she shares stories from her own life. In her late 20s, she struggled to end an abusive relationship, terrified that giving up meant she’d wasted years of her life — a classic “sunk cost fallacy.” Humans are social creatures, Montell notes, afraid of inviting scrutiny by admitting mistakes.

“My hope is for these chapters to make some sense of the senseless,” Montell says early on. “To crack open a window in our minds, and let a warm breeze in.” And indeed, in some moments, her sharp descriptions of behavioral foibles and her talent for cutting through doublespeak clear room for hope: Maybe noticing our warped thinking will make its effects less painful. Maybe our generational “crisis” is a story of not-enough-neurons encountering too-many-terabytes.

When confidence in Montell’s analysis wavers, it’s because the targets are too broad, the claims imprecise. For instance, we’re never quite sure of the shape of the national mental health crisis she repeatedly references. Early on, she draws a distinction between Americans’ current mental health struggles and 20th-century battles against bodily oppression. This neat separation doesn’t reflect reality — “The Age of Magical Overthinking” was published after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and during ongoing fights for voter access, health care and the right to protest. It also doesn’t reflect what science has shown about illnesses like depression, which are often tied up with a person’s physical and political well-being. Ultimately, we’re left with the sense that Montell’s crisis of the mind begins and ends with the vague feelings of anxiety and dread many people feel after scrolling on social media apps.

Montell implies that the breakdown of Americans’ mental health began after 2000, brought on by internet access and introspection. Conflating “the internet” with social media, she draws loose connections between online scrolling and mental turmoil, making no reference to the complicated science around how social media use affects our brains. Some studies have found bumps in anxiety and depression associated with social media use, but more recent meta-analyses call their methods and findings into question . To date, researchers have found no consistent causal link between spending time on social apps and experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Of course, future research may uncover new ways to measure how social media use or other online activities affect the mental health of different populations. Perhaps we should rely on a different measure altogether, like qualitative research into young people and their families. Rather than critique the existing science or offer an alternative lens, Montell picks two studies that support her thesis and hand-waves at the dire state of things.

Finally, although Montell says cognitive biases affect everyone, she aims her jabs at the safest of targets: “Disney adults,” “male girlbosses,” “Facebook-addicted Karens.” Readers hoping for fresh or counterintuitive takes on internet culture — and its heroes and villains — may walk away disappointed.

Montell says from the jump that her analysis of 2020s malaise is “not a system of thought,” likening her work instead to a Buddhist koan — meant to be pondered, not understood. That’s fine, and “The Age of Magical Overthinking” ultimately features interesting topics, fun research and vivid stories. But in Montell’s effort to critique the spirit of our times, she asks imprecise questions and offers unsatisfactory answers.

Tatum Hunter is a consumer technology reporter at The Washington Post based in San Francisco. Her work focuses on health, privacy and relationships in the internet era.

The Age of Magical Overthinking

Notes on Modern Irrationality

By Amanda Montell

Atria/One Signal. 272 pp. $28.

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AI’s ability to write for us—and our inability to resist ‘The Button’—will spark a crisis of meaning in creative work

"Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI," by Ethan Mollick.

Soon, every major office application and email client will include a button to help you create a draft of your work. It deserves capital letters: The Button.

When faced with the tyranny of the blank page, people are going to push The Button. It is so much easier to start with something than nothing. Students are going to use it to start essays. Managers will use it to start emails, reports, or documents. Teachers will use it when providing feedback. Scientists will use it to write grants. Concept artists will use it for their first draft. Everyone is going to use The Button.

The implications of having AI write our first drafts (even if we do the work ourselves, which is not a given) are huge. One consequence is that we could lose our creativity and originality. When we use AI to generate our first drafts, we tend to anchor on the first idea that the machine produces, which influences our future work. Even if we rewrite the drafts completely, they will still be tainted by the AI’s influence. We will not be able to explore different perspectives and alternatives, which could lead to better solutions and insights.

Another consequence is that we could reduce the quality and depth of our thinking and reasoning. When we use AI to generate our first drafts, we don’t have to think as hard or as deeply about what we write. We rely on the machine to do the hard work of analysis and synthesis, and we don’t engage in critical and reflective thinking ourselves. We also miss the opportunity to learn from our mistakes and feedback and the chance to develop our own style.

AI can do it

There is already evidence that this is going to be a problem. A recent MIT study found that ChatGPT mostly serves as a substitute for human effort, not a complement to our skills. In fact, the vast majority of participants didn’t even bother editing the AI’s output. This is a problem I see repeatedly when people first use AI: they just paste in the exact question they are asked and let the AI answer it.

A lot of work is time-consuming by design. In a world in which the AI gives an instant, pretty good, near universally accessible shortcut, we’ll soon face a crisis of meaning in creative work of all kinds. This is, in part, because we expect creative work to take careful thought and revision, but also that time often operates as a stand-in for work. Take, for example, the letter of recommendation. Professors are asked to write letters for students all the time, and a good letter takes a long time to write. You have to understand the student and the reason for the letter, decide how to phrase the letter to align with the job requirements and the student’s strengths, and more. The fact that it is time-consuming is somewhat the point. That a professor takes the time to write a good letter is a sign that they support the student’s application. We are setting our time on fire to signal to others that this letter is worth reading.

Or we can push The Button.

And the problem is that the letter the AI generates is going to be good. Not just grammatically correct, but persuasive and insightful to a human reader. It is going to be better than most letters of recommendation that I receive. This means that not only is the quality of the letter no longer a signal of the professor’s interest, but also that you may actually be hurting people by not writing a letter of recommendation by AI, especially if you are not a particularly strong writer. So people now have to consider that the goal of the letter (getting a student a job) is in contrast with the morally correct method of accomplishing the goal (the professor spending a lot of time writing the letter). I am still doing all my letters the old-fashioned way, but I wonder whether that will ultimately do my students a disservice.

Now consider all the other tasks whose final written output is important because it is a signal of the time spent on the task and of the thoughtfulness that went into it—performance reviews, strategic memos, college essays, grant applications, speeches, comments on papers. And so much more.

Reconstructing meaning

Then The Button starts to tempt everyone. Work that was boring to do but meaningful when completed by humans (like performance reviews) becomes easy to outsource—and the apparent quality actually increases. We start to create documents mostly with AI that get sent to AI-powered inboxes, where the recipients respond primarily with AI. Even worse, we still create the reports by hand but realize that no human is actually reading them. This kind of meaningless task, what organizational theorists have called mere ceremony, has always been with us. But AI will make a lot of previously useful tasks meaningless. It will also remove the facade that previously disguised meaningless tasks. We may not have always known if our work mattered in the bigger picture, but in most organizations, the people in your part of the organizational structure felt it did. With AI-generated work sent to other AIs to assess, that sense of meaning disappears.

We are going to need to reconstruct meaning, in art and in the rituals of creative work. This is not an easy process, but we have done it before, many times. Where musicians once made money from records, they now depend on being excellent live performers. When photography made realistic oil paintings obsolete, artists started pushing the bounds of photography as art. When the spreadsheet made adding data by hand unneeded, clerks shifted their responsibilities to bigger-picture issues. This change in meaning is going to have a large effect on work.

Excerpted with permission from Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI , by Ethan Mollick, in agreement with Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © Ethan Mollick, 2024.

Ethan Mollick is a professor of management at Wharton, specializing in entrepreneurship and innovation. He writes the AI-focused blog One Useful Thing and is the creator of numerous educational games on a variety of topics.

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