Introduction
Rice, with origins in both Asia and Africa, is the most widely consumed grain in the world. It feeds a third of the world’s population: 590 million tons of rice were produced in 2003. The Chinese word for rice is the same as the word for food (as well as agriculture and culture), in Japan the word for cooked rice is the same word for meal. In Thailand, when you call your family to a meal you say, “eat rice.” Since it was first harvested growing wild, through today, rice means prosperity—the end to hunger.
Rice is nutritious. Rice is high in complex carbohydrates, contains almost no fat, is cholesterol free, and is low in sodium, except for the salt added to the cooking water. All rice, both brown and white, is considered a good source of vitamins and minerals. Although almost all the nutrients are stripped from white rice when the bran layer is removed during milling, 90% of all American-grown rice is enriched with thiamine, niacin and iron and in some instances riboflavin, Vitamin D and calcium. White rice, because it is enriched, has more iron and thiamine than brown rice. Brown rice has five times more Vitamin E and three times more magnesium.
Brown rice provides twice as much fiber as white rice, but it is not an especially rich source of fiber. On the other hand, rice bran alone is an excellent source of fiber. Rice is a fair source of protein containing all eight essential amino acids. It is low in the amino acid lysine, which is found in beans making the classic combination of rice and beans, popularly known as complementary proteins, a particularly healthful dish. Rice is gluten-free and easily digestible making it a good choice for infants and people with wheat allergies or digestive problems. While exact counts will vary based on the type of rice, a half cup of cooked white rice provides 82 calories; an equal amount of brown rice provides 89 calories; 0 grams fat, 0 grams saturated fat, 0 grams trans fat, 0 milligrams sodium, 45 grams total carbohydrate (15% Daily Value), 0 gramssugar and 3 grams of protein.
Rice consumption is on the rise. In fact, Americans eat twice as much rice now than they did 10 years ago. Eating healthier foods is certainly a significant part of the picture, but the growth of interest in, and access to, the rice-based cuisines of India, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam, and the beautiful “gourmet” rice available to chefs and consumers, have also contributed to the growth.
The History Of Rice
Americans are not big rice eaters: Statistics say that we eat just 25 pounds per year, with about four pounds of that attributed to brewing beer. In Myanmar (the former Burma), a person eats 500 pounds of rice a year, or 1¼ pounds per day. But then,rice cultivation may have originated in one of the long valleys of Myanmar’s Shan Upland, or nearby. Radiocarbon dating of strata containing grains of rice found in south China indicate rice was cultivated as far back as 7,000 year ago. Researchers believe rice may have been indigenous to what is now India; domestication (cultivation) most likely took place in the Assam area of northeast India, southwestern China, Myanmar or Thailand. You can see from the map below that these countries are neighbors in southeast Asia.
|
Wild rice (the rice plantgrowing wild, as opposed to the grass known today as wild rice) was cultivated perhaps by 4000 B.C.E. Pottery shards carbon-dated to then, bearing the imprint of both the grains and the husks of rice (Oryza sativa), were discovered at Non Nok Tha in the Korat area of Thailand.* Rice then moved to the rest of Indochina (the peninsula of Thailand and Cambodia) and southeast Asia. The first written record of rice cultivation dates to China around 2800 B.C.E., in a decree on rice plantingauthorized by a Chinese emperor.
|
 Map of southeast Asia from the World Fact book, Cia.go v. The area called Burma is now known as Myanmar. |
Rice reached western India about 2500 B.C.E. and Sri Lanka, an island off the coast of India, around 1000 B.C.E. It took a while longer to get to the West.
*From Guide To Thailand.
Rice first came to Europe—to Greece—when members of Alexander the Great’s expedition to India, 344 to 324 B.C.E., returned with it. By the time of the RomanEmpire, some rice was grown around the Mediterranean Sea, in southern Europe and North Africa, including Egypt.
In the Late Middle Ages in Europe, people blamed rice and the standing water in rice paddies for causing malaria, by giving the mosquitoes a good place to lay their eggs. Many towns discouraged farmers from planting rice to try to prevent malaria. (However, extensive knowledge and use of rice in Europe date back only to the fifteenth century.)
Rice In America
There is a story that cultivation of rice in America began by accident in 1685, after a storm-damaged ship from Madagascar docked in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. The captain of the ship gave a small bag of “Golden Seede Rice,” (named for its color) as a gift to a local planter. While that may be so, it was not likely to be the first appearance of rice in the New World. Colonists from Europe had also brought rice with them in the 1600s. By 1726, Charleston was exporting more than 4,000 tons of rice a year, and “Carolina Golde” later became the standard of high-quality rice throughout the world. When America gained independence 50 years later, rice was one of the major agricultural crops.
The U.S. has historically exported more rice than it consumed. From the 18th century until the beginning of the Civil War, rice was a major crop of the Carolinas and Georgia. It is a very labor-intensive crop, but wealthy rice plantations had hundreds of slaves, and from 100 to 300 were required, depending on the size of the plantation. Familiar with African rice cultivation, the slaves are credited with contributing significantly to the area’s industry before it was destroyed by the Civil War. Following the war, and with the mechanization of agriculture, rice growing moved west to Louisiana, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Texas.
The 1849 gold rush brought many immigrants to California, including an estimated 40,000 Chinese, whose staple food was rice. Rice production became a necessity. Fortunately, it grew well in California’s Sacramento Valley, in clay soil that was largely unsuited to other crops. Today, California is America’s second-largest rice producer, after Arkansas, the twelfth largest rice producer worldwide and the second largest exporter of rice (the first is Thailand).
While the U.S. is a major exporter, we keep about half of our rice for domestic use. According to the USA Rice Federation, 90% of the rice consumed in America is grown here.
Now that you know the history of rice, see how it is grown.
How To Grow Rice
|
The two major types of rice, indica (long-grain) and japonica (medium- and short-grain) do well in different environments. Long-grain indica rices (basmati and jasmine, for example) do well in hot, equatorial climates. Medium- and short-grain japonica rices grow well in temperate and mountainous regions. Rice cultivation has traditionally been well-suited to countries and regions with low labor costs and high rainfall. Without modern technology, rice is very labor-intensive to cultivate; either way it requires plenty of water for irrigation.
|
 Seedlings in a rice paddy. Photo by Kashfia Rahman | SXC. |
 Farmers working in a paddy in Bangladesh. Photo by Shahnur A. Alam | SXC. |
Rice can be grown practically anywhere, even on steep hillsides. It is typically grown in paddies, shallow puddles, because the the rice plant is tolerant of water and the water in the paddies prevents weeds from overtaking the seedlings. Once the crop is grown, the water is drained so it can be harvested. While the paddy system increases productivity, rice can also be grown on dry land; for example, on terraced hillsides in areas lacking flat lands, with the help of chemical weed controls. Paddies are dug into some terraces.
|
Planting
Paddies, standing puddles of water, are an inspired form of agriculture. First, they conserve a limited supply of water, as opposed to farming that requires constant irrigation. One- to six-week-old seedlings are transplanted into the water, giving the young plants an important head start to survive over a very wide range of competing weeds. While some weeds grow in water, there are far fewer there than on land. Thus, paddy cultivation leads to higher yields. Transplanting seedlings lets the farmer adjust the planting calendar to accommodate the water supply and other variables.
In small, non-mechanized operations, rice seedlings are hand-planted in paddies (“wet rice cultivation”) using traditions honed over millennia—it is back-breaking work. Fields are sometimes drained temporarily for fertilizing and weeding.
While paddies are generally just a few inches deep, different methods of rice cultivation have evolved in different regions to meet specific climate and geography challenges. For example, in flood-prone Bangladesh, “deep-water rice” is grown by seeding the rice just as the water is just beginning to rise; the growth of plants keeps up with the rising water level. The rice plants bear their grain above the surface of the water, sometimes to depths of five meters!
On mega-farms in California, Texas and elsewhere, each March the rice fields are carefully leveled with laser-precision grading equipment (because flat land conserves water); tractors plow shallow furrows into the field, the water is run in to a depth of five inches, and airplanes flying at 100 mph sow the rice seeds from the air.
 Old-style rice farming: Farmers working in a paddy in Bangladesh, planting seedlings as they’ve done for millennia. Photo by Shahnur A. Alam | SXC |
New-style rice farming: Seeding a rice field by plane in California’s Sacramento Valley. Photo courtesy of CalRice.org. |
 Grains of rice grow in panicles at the top of the plant. Photo by S.R. Patel | SXC. |
Whether by old school or new school technique, the rice grows. As the seedlings mature, they draw nutrients from the paddy water. The same water keeps the weed population under control.† Over the four to five months that the rice matures, the paddies change from green to golden yellow to the color of dry straw. When the seedlings will reach maturity, the stalks will be three feet tall and grains of rice will be dangling in their husks, from long panicles at the top of the plant.
†Applications of herbicides are applied to control weeds, and if necessary, farmers may also treat the fields for the rice water weevil and other insects. There are also organic rices, grown with no chemical pesticides. |
Harvesting & Milling
Grains are harvested before they are fully mature, about 30 days after the rice plants have flowered. The levees are opened and the water is drained. The plants are cut halfway up the stem. In non-mechanized farming they are hand-harvested by sickle. In the U.S., where the rice industry is thoroughly mechanized, a giant combine harvester rolls across the field, cutting the plants and separating the rough or paddy rice from the straw. The rice can be allowed to dry in the field or bundled for processing. Here, the rough rice is transported to enormous dryers where the moisture content is reduced to an ideal level. The rice is now ready for milling. On average, one acre in a modern rice field yields 8,000 pounds of rice!
The milling process in the U.S. is high tech and efficient, but very simple. In this country, white rice is converted or parboiled to retain nutrients. In this process, it is steam pressure-treated before it is hulled; the steam forces some of the nutrients from the hull into the grain. The hull is then removed in a sheller, basically two rubber rollers that remove the hulls by friction.
The rice that first emerges is brown rice—it still is covered by the bran. To get white rice, the bran is removed by abrasion, rubbing the grains against each other. Broken grains are sorted out by sifting through a series of screens—the most high-tech mills have a laser scanner that spots discolored kernels and blasts them aside with pressurized air. The beautiful rice is now ready to be packaged and sold.
In the absence of technology, the harvested grains are threshed to separate the grain from the stalk and the enclosing husk. This is usually done by bashing bundles of rice stems on a stone or other hard platform, or by using animals to trample on the stems. Winnowing is usually done by shaking or tossing the rice on a basketwork tray. The grain falls onto the mat and the husk, chaff and dust are carried away by the wind. Luckier people have hand-winnowing machines. The grain is then dried in the sun, until it is ready for hulling or transport to the mill.
Now that you know the background of rice, you can view the many varieties of rice.