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Riceasia |
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The story of a grain: from land to mouth And yet...
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It takes 5000 litres of water to produce 1 kg of rice! In an age where rapidly growing populations are competing for limited supplies of water, it remains to be seen how long Asia can sustain growth in rice production in the 21st century with that kind of ratio.
The Many Labours of Rice More than 1 billion people in the world make their living from rice. That's because rice farming isn't as simple as sowing the seed and growing it normally. First, rice seed is sown onto a carefully prepared starter bed. Then the rice field is manured, flooded and ploughed. When the seedlings gain a certain height, they are transplanted from the bed to field by hand. A single xperienced farmer will take 3 days to transplant one acre, though this is always done by many people working together. Then the field is hand-weeded and flooded. The field has to remain flooded for 3-6 months. Harvesting is done by hand. Then the rice has to be threshed (the grains are separated from the stalk) and milled (that is, the husk is removed). Water, Water Everywhere Rice is extremely labour-intensive, but it gives more employment than other crops, a boon to the over-populated regions of Asia. However, the major cause of concern is that rice is a water-guzzler. With the amount of water needed for one acre of rice, you could irrigate 3 acres of wheat and 5 acres of vegetables. More than 80 per cent of rice lands in the world are rain fed and grow only one crop a year. So, if the rains fail, even that crop is gone. And how much water can be diverted for rice irrigation at a time when fresh water is running short for human consumption? Already around Beijing, farmers are not allowed to grow rice in flooded fields due to a shortage of water. If that is a taste of things to come, then it's bad news for India.
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In the future, rice production must grow to keep pace with the growing population with better and more efficient use of water, land and labour. At the same time, losses incurred during production, transportation and processing have to be reduced. One way to reduce the amount of water required for cultivation is by the development of varieties called "aerobic rice", that are better suited for dry soils. Scientists have been trying to develop, genetically, rice that would yield several times the current types "almost anytime and anywhere in the torrid zone". The concurrent use of rice-field water both for irrigation and aquaculture is another good idea. Another basic, but unpopular measure would be to make farmers pay for all the water they use in the rice-fields. That would encourage water conservation. Schemes like this are already underway in China. India exported 1,532,600 tonnes of rice in 2000. If that was equated with exporting 7663 billion litres of water, one would get a fair idea of the magnitude of the problem.
With the water needed for one acre of rice, you could irrigate 5 acres of vegetables.
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Rice fields covered 1.5 million square kms of land in 2002 |
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Rice: The starchy seeds or grain of an annual marsh rass, cultivated in warm climates and used for food. 'Rice' comes from the Tamil word arisi. Arab traders took arisi with them and called it al-ruz. This became arroz in Spanish and oriza in Greek. In French it became riz, Italian riso, German reis and finally in English rice. The biological name for rice, oryza, also comes from arisi. 130 million years ago... Wild rice started growing on this planet. 15000 years ago: The “indica” variety of wild rice grew on the northern and southern slopes of the Himalayas. It spread to northern and eastern India, Southeast Asia and to southern China. 3500 years ago: In Africa, a domestic strain was developed from wild rice. 3000 years ago: Rice was introduced to Japan from eastern China. 543 BC: Indica entered Sri Lanka and then made its way to Malaya and Java. Centuries after, Asian rice also reached Africa via Java. 1st to 11th Centuries AD: Arab traders took rice from India to Iran and then Egypt. From there it went to Spain and Sicily. Moors took it to Portugal. The 639 AD: Rice was first cultivated in the Nile Valley. 1468: From Italy, rice reached Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Romania. 1522: Mexico received its first shipment. 1609: America received its first shipment. Early 18th Century: Czar Peter I first imported rice into the country from Iran. And today... It is grown in all continents except Antarctica. Source: The Story of Rice by R D Sharma, NBT ORYZA SATIVA: Food for millions |
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need? But haven’t our people been using these
So many hybrids =
I hear rice originated in Himalayas. It went from India to rest of world. We have been growing
"Basmati. Kasmati. Texmati. You name it. We stock it. We deliver it. We export it. Anyone else who does so should be locked up for illegal trade. Up with the World Trade Organisation!"
Sociology, Tradition and Lifeline. In India, no ritual is complete without using akshata (rice coloured with haldi)"
"Rice? Ya, you get it fried in those fancy Chinese restaurants. By the way, Economy is greater than History, Sociology and Tradition put together. We
“Rice cultivation is long, laborious. Seed is sown somewhere, transplanted elsewhere. I can do 1 acre in 3 days. Ploughing, manuring, flooding,
“Growing rice is cool. Plough the field with a tractor. Flood it. Drop soaked rice seeds from a plane. It takes us one day in man-hours to grow a tonne of paddy. (It takes Asia 100 days to do the same!)
techniques from China. Using this method, in the same pond, fish and rice can be symbiotic, eliminating the need for fertilizers and additional ponds.
Masanobu Fukuoka is the pioneer of "natural farming", which could reverse the degenerative momentum of modern agriculture. It requires no machines and no chemicals. He grows high-yielding crops of rice simply by scattering seed onto an unplowed field! From his book The One-Straw Revolution: "The basic idea came to him one day as he happened to pass an old field which had been left unused and unplowed for many years. There he saw healthy rice seedlings sprouting through a tangle of grasses and weeds. From then on, he stopped flooding his field in order to grow rice. He stopped sowing rice seed in spring and, instead, put the seed out in the autumn, sowing it directly onto the surface of the field when it would naturally have fallen to the ground. Instead of plowing the soil to get rid of weeds, he learned to control them by a more or less permanent ground cover of white clover and a mulch of rice and barley straw. Once he has seen to it that conditions have been tilted in favour of crops, Mr Fukuoka interferes as little as possible with in his fields.”