One of the great success stories in the continuing worldwide fight against famine will be highlighted this week in Bangladesh during a meeting of the Board of Trustees of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).

Millions of small Bangladeshi farmers used to depend exclusively on rainfed rice in this land of annual monsoon rains and frequently disastrous flooding. Yields were low at about 2 tons per hectare, and in the 1970s as many as 70 percent of Bangladeshis lived below the poverty line.

In 1974, monsoon flooding was far worse than normal. It destroyed about 2.5 million hectares of rice, much of it deepwater, and the land remained inundated for too long to replant and try again. Agricultural laborers lost jobs, wage rates declined and, with the next crop a year away, rice prices trebled. Thirty thousand people died in the resulting famine. Thousands more were saved by international food aid.

Soon after this disaster, a revolution began to sweep through Bangladesh's rice fields. Armed with new technology and tapping abundant supplies of groundwater, farmers began switching from deepwater and rainfed winter rice to irrigated dry-season rice. They also began growing in the wet season modern, high-yielding varieties developed by IRRI, or rice bred locally by the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI), often from IRRI parents. Yields rose to as much as 5 tons per hectare.

Gradually, the area planted to weather-vulnerable crops -- either flood-prone (deepwater or wet season aman, April to November) or drought-prone (early wet season aus, March to June) -- dwindled from 4.8 to 1.4 million hectares, and the area under safe dry-season crops rose from 0.5 to 3.8 million hectares.

In 1998, another flood, the worst in a decade, prompted dire forecasts of spiraling food prices, widespread unemployment, famine and epidemics, and as many as 2 million deaths. None of these predictions were realized. The flood destroyed 2 million tons of rice, but there was no famine. The deepwater rice crop had become unimportant, so the dry-season harvest could quickly compensate for the loss. As the water receded, Bangladeshi farmers planted boro rice, an irrigated, high-yielding, cold-tolerant and relatively pest-free rice cultivated during the winter months.

The subsequent harvest was the best in the country's history, and the government infrastructure for distributing emergency relief proved to be equally effective. Bangladesh avoided having to pay for imported food, and the international community was spared the expense of providing emergency food aid.

An economic analysis of the Bangladesh case concluded that, for a total investment of US$18 million per year in rice research, irrigation development and agricultural extension, the country's total cost savings amounted to US$229 million per year over 20 years. Had these savings been invested to yield a 10 percent annual return, the total benefit to Bangladesh would now be a staggering US$33.5 billion.

"Without doubt, Bangladesh has been one of great success stories in using science and technology to fight famine," said IRRI Director General Ronald P. Cantrell. "By holding our Board of Trustees meeting in Dhaka we want to pay tribute to the achievements of Bangladeshi scientists and rice farmers and also of the institutes, organizations and ministries that have all played such a vital role in helping the  nation achieve food security.

"Most importantly, we want to thank the government of Bangladesh, and all of IRRI's partners in that country, for their wonderful support and cooperation," Dr. Cantrell added. "Clearly, enormous challenges continue to confront Bangladesh, especially regarding poverty. But Bangladeshis now have the expertise, technologies and strategies needed to ensure that the nation can produce enough rice to feed its citizens without having to rely on the generosity of other countries."

The number of poor in rice-producing Asia -- most of them concentrated in Bangladesh and other South Asia nations -- is nearly 3 times that of sub-Saharan Africa, the second largest locus of poverty. To some extent, Asia has more poor people than Africa simply because its population is much larger. Yet some key indicators suggest that the incidence of poverty is worse in large parts of Asia than in  sub-Saharan Africa.

For example, stunting, wasting and underweight all afflict a larger proportion of children in South-Central Asia (dominated by India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) than in sub-Saharan Africa. Illuminating a similar picture of the status of women, the proportion of severely underweight adult women is much higher in Bangladesh and Nepal than in Chad or Madagascar, the two countries in sub-Saharan Africa with the highest prevalence of underweight adult women.

"It seems that well-publicized progress toward alleviating hunger and poverty in much of Asia, including Bangladesh, may have caused many people to forget that poverty still troubles the world's largest continent," Dr. Cantrell said. "Certainly the level of official development assistance provided per poor person in rice-producing Asia is only about half that of sub-Saharan Africa."

Dr. Cantrell said that IRRI is fully committed to working with its partners in Bangladesh in the fight against poverty. "One of the best new models for fighting rural poverty anywhere in the world is the 5-year, £9.5 million project Poverty Elimination Through Rice Research Assistance funded by the United Kingdom's Department for International Development," Dr. Cantrell explained.

The project, called PETRRA for short, is managed by IRRI in a close partnership with BRRI and the Bangladesh Ministry of Agriculture. Its main goal is to achieve further substantial increases in domestic rice production and incomes by 2008, and so make a major contribution toward a 50 percent reduction in rural and urban poverty by 2015 - the millennium development goal to which the government of Bangladesh has committed itself.

In simple terms, this means lifting 26 million people out of poverty over the next dozen years. To achieve this, PETRRA focuses on four key outputs:

• new rice-production technologies for resource-poor farm households,
• improved capacity for demand-led research in the national agricultural research system,
• greater recognition of, and promotion of dialogue on, key policy issues, and
• improved methods for the effective uptake of new technologies.

"We are proud of the progress made so far made by PETTRA and would like to recognize the vision and commitment of DFID in supporting such an innovative and important new strategy," Dr. Cantrell said, referring to the Department for International Development. "During our board meeting, we will be looking closely at PETTRA and what it hasachieved, because it clearly provides many important lessons in the fight against rural poverty."

The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is the world's leading rice research and training center. Based in the Philippines and with offices in 10 other Asian countries, it is an autonomous, nonprofit institution focused on improving the well-being of present and future generations of rice farmers and consumers, particularly those with low incomes, while preserving natural resources. IRRI is one of 16 centers funded through the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), an association of public and private donor agencies.