 up to the podium, that would be appreciated. So once again, the book launch today is for Rise in the Global Economy, Strategic Research and Policy Issues for Food Security. To start the presentations is going to be the chair of the editorial board of the book, Dr. Sushil Pandil, Andy, who is a senior economist at ERI. The book covers the display there in the global economy. There is a book being prepared. The natural question that comes to mind is that why one more book? Why another book? Rise in the Economy. There have been several books in the past. Going as far back as 1941, two people wrote about Rise in the Economy of Monson in Asia, highlighting some of the issues at the time. And in 1985, Randy Barker and Bob Hurd wrote the book, The Asian Rise in the Economy, capturing many of the highlights of the Green Revolution up to that time. And I would like to remind you that in 1995, it was also the year of 25 years of ERI's founding. See what you mean? And here today we are here under the 50th year. Sushil Pandil, another book that Prabhu mentioned in his opening address also, The Asian Rise Balls in the Turning Crisis. And that brought many of the issues up to date, up to that 96th stage. And we know very well that 96, 97, and 13, 14 years behind us, there have been many changes. And we have seen those trends in the global economy, global price production, all those issues that we saw in the context of food prices of 2008, the prices fight and so on. But the war down is quite different from what it was in the 1990s. Many of those trends are still there, but there are many new issues that have come and hence we felt that it is quite appropriate on this occasion of the 50th anniversary of ERI's founding that we prepare a book not to tell how fantastic ERI has been, what a fantastic drug eating has done that you all know already. What we wanted to do is to look ahead and to say that, okay, even all these trends that we know of, the changes that are taking place in the global economy and how agriculture and other sectors are getting increasingly linked, integrated and the issues that we have of food insecurity, price problems and so on, what are the things, what kind of the rice system will evolve in the future or what kind of rice system will be needed for us to assure food security from the global. So it's a kind of a... asking various strategic questions and some of those that I have listed there that how will the growth of rice change in the context of economic growth and how will rice increase in the future? Small farm, large farms, how will the scarcity will affect rice production and quite importantly, can the poor depend on rice trade for a stable food security? We saw some big problems in 2008 and what can be done to address those problems? What's the role of Africa and how will climate change will affect the future of rice production? So this book is about developing a new reason for the future of rice farming and the purpose being to a strategic position in restaurant, in rice research, technology delivery and design of policy reform. So really help us to think about these key issues and looking ahead, not doing an introspective analysis. Of course there will be some basis for moving ahead but our focus of this book is really looking ahead for what we need. And this book highlights five major challenges. These include meeting the global food security needs. We know that the food security needs of the poor are still somewhat unmet. There are a lot of risks. Food security is still tenuous as shown by the 2008 food crisis. So in the context of the changes like the diversification of diets and the role of rice changing in condoms and baskets, what are those things that we need to do to ensure the global food security? A very important one. The second point which is how do you successfully manage the structural change? We all know that in the course of economic development, other sectors of economy grow. The side of agriculture in the relative sense will shrink over time. People will start seeking employment in the non-finance sector. And in those contexts, how do you successfully manage the structural change so that the balance of the income distribution between the rural and urban population is managed better with the needs of the consumers and the producers? And how do we also facilitate the exit of many other farms from rice production or from agriculture? So these are the rural issues that will affect not only the way that we produce but also the way we will be able to address the problem of the deep poverty. Because that is the key of the problem. In terms of addressing the poverty that is so persistent. The third one, enhancing efficiency in input yield and value change. All related to the aspects where we need to be able to save on the input that are becoming more and more scarce like labor border and so on. And also opportunities of the value change. Closedly, related to that is the reducing the environment of rice production. Of course, by improving the input efficiency that will make a big impact on reducing the impact of rice production. There are also other direct effects from rice production that could be environmentally positive by the technology that will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and so on. And finally addressing lagging regions. Many of the renferry areas, upland areas that are poorly connected with the markets the poverty is very deep and how we address problems in those reasons. So this book, various chapters in this book try to tackle some of these issues and then come up with some ideas on the technological opportunities, technological intervention and the policy and institutional changes that are needed to be able to address these five major challenges. I'll just quickly take you through the process of how this book idea came through. I had a brief chat with Prabhu in 2008 in Manila, in the context of the Asian Agricultural Economics Association meeting and I bounced this idea off you that how about that he would prepare a book on the occasion of his 50th anniversary and he was very pleased he said that yes come up with a proposal and I would take a look and that's what we started in 2008, August and after that we constituted an editorial board to manage the whole process, commissioned the chapters lead authors contacted, identified and contacted. We had a workshop in Beijing in 2009 and all the papers, chapters were here with you and the editorial board that managed the process put the list there with me and the chair of the board and Derek Byrony from the World Bank and currently a member of the SPIA, Debbie Dahl a team of women from the U.D. who is Sam Mamanthi this is the group that managed the whole process and here is a long list of authors just when the book got printed 59, each column has 20, the middle has 19, so it's 59 they are contributing very well known by the established experts in their own fields and others reviewed each of the chapters and board members also reviewed the chapters and there are 4 sections in the book and each of these sections has a set of key issues with the rise in the global food economy that deals with the broader issues on the consumption demand structure of transformation and rise and so on I do not want to go through the whole list just to give you a quick glimpse and how rice production and post-savvy operation might be done in the future and the input efficiency how that can be improved and we looked at each of the components particularly to the managing irrigation test and to the post-savvy and we gave it quite a bit of a crisis on the rice market structure because we know in 2008 the problems we saw were related to market structures so they were both the domestic market and the international market component trade component and finally a backup theme on the issues related to the technologies what can we do so this book basically presents a very rich set of ideas to address some of the challenges that I have listed before I will not go through the list here right now but let me just complete my presentation by expressing acknowledgement expressing our appreciation of the Foundation of the funding support many of the authors and co-authors are now trying to this chapter and the ED support staff help out we have a strong support for the ED board at the back of the ED management so that's the process that we went through as I said it's a very rich in concept, 18 chapters I will very much encourage you to get hold of a copy read it carefully and I'm pretty sure that you'll find what happens there insightful for researchers, for policymakers for others who are interested in the rice sector thank you very much