“IR8,” The Miracle That Was – Thank You, IRRI! “IR9” Or “RiceRiches,” The Miracle That We Need Today To Solve Poverty As Well As Resolve Climate Change! Thank You, PhilRice?

2 Presidents, 1 History in the Use of Technology for the Good of the People, Democracy – US President Lyndon “LBJ” Johnson and PH President Ferdinand “FM” Marcos – celebrating the Golden Year of The Birth of IRRI’s “Miracle Rice.”

Today’s news shared on Facebook was written 55 years ago today by now-retired Gene Hetteland is reprinted in IRRI’s own Rice Today (04 April 2022, “Celebrating 50 Years Of IR8: US President Johnson Makes Historic Visit To IRRI With Stirring Words,” ricetoday.irri.org):

This year, 2016, IRRI is observing and celebrating the 50th anniversary of the release of IR8, the first semi-dwarf rice variety that would ultimately change the face of agriculture across Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere.

In the above 1966 photo, that is LBJ kneeling, behind him FM standing next to IRRI Director General Robert Chandler Jr who is giving the briefing. All around is IR8, the rice variety bred to be very low in height but very high in yield. This will, LBJ says, “do more to escalate [the international efforts to win] the war against hunger than anything that I know of that is being done today. So, I congratulate President Marcos.” (Note: IRRI is based in the Philippines, offices & laboratories & experimental fields next to the campus of then-UP College of Agriculture, now UP Los Baños.)

LBJ is sure to note that FM is “so excited and who has described it to me fully today” – referring to IR8. Who would not have been excited? I don’t have the data from the Philippines, but I have this one from India. Justin Rowlatt reports from BBC (“IR8: The Miracle Rice Which Saved Millions Of Lives,” 01 Dec 2016, BBC News, bbc.com), that Indian farmer Nekkanti Subba Rao said he used to harvest 1 ton/ha – with IR8, he was now harvesting 10 tons/ha. 1 became 10 – It’s a miracle!

During that historic occasion, LBJ says, mentioning the world’s billions of people in need of food and identifying people who should produce such:

If the world’s need for food is to be met, it will be by scientists and economists who will discover better seeds, who will find better methods of planting, who will give us better ways of distributing the harvest of the earth. It will not be by “miracles,” but by the qualities of dedicated minds that we find working right here tonight in the new Los Baños rice strain.

But I’m a stubborn Filipino; I insist on another miracle. I call it “RiceRiches” – from PhilRice’s highly productive initiative “Palayamanan” (“palay” for rice, “yamanan” for riches multiplying – my free translation). Where a different “Miracle of 1 becoming 10” unravels. I call that magic “IR9,” that is, Interplanting Rice with 9 other crops in the same field & growing them at the same time. IR9: That’s 10 crops productive in the same plot of land in the same season – rice farmers would never have it so abundantly!@517