Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The History of Rice (Encore)

Starting point is 00:00:00 The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. For thousands of years, rice has been one of the most important agricultural crops in the world. It's fed billions of people, has been cross-bred into tens of thousands of variants, and has now grown in every country except Antarctica. The importance of rice has not diminished over time and, in fact, might grow in the future. Learn more about rice, how it was domesticated and spread around the world on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed.

Starting point is 00:00:54 It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. When I previously did an episode on the history of bread, the origin of wheat had a pretty defined area that we think it came from. It was somewhere around the fertile crescent, and maybe eastern Turkey. Pitting down the origin of rice isn't nearly as simple. The strain of rice in question is known as Oriza Sistiva, which is more commonly known as Asian rice. The vast majority of the thousands of variants of rice that exist today all came from the wild strain of this species.

Starting point is 00:01:36 And just to complicate things, there are two subspecies. Orisa Sativa Japonica, which is found in China, and Orisa Sativa Indica, which is found in India. For decades, there were competing theories as to the origin of rice. One theory held that it originated in China, somewhere near the Yangtze River, and the other held that it came from India, somewhere probably in the north. There is archaeological evidence for rice in both India and China, dating back thousands of years. The oldest evidence for India goes back about 4,500 years ago. However, four grains of rice were found in the Yuchan Yan Cave in the Hunan province of China, which dates back 12,000 to 16,000 years ago.

Starting point is 00:02:17 This debate was settled once and for all using a technique known as gene dating. A 2011 paper found that all of the Arise of Sativa Rice that we know of came from a single domestication event that occurred between 13,500 and 8,200 years ago in China. This date fits the archaeological evidence quite well, and the Chinese origin theory is now generally accepted as the consensus position. From this starting point, probably somewhere along the Yangtze River, rice spread over the next several thousand years, and this too has been very controversial. There have been at least 11 different proposed routes that rice might have taken to get to Southeast Asia, Oceana, and

Starting point is 00:02:56 Africa. Around 4,000 years ago, the Jeponica strain made it to the Indus Valley in India, and there something happened that probably caused the original confusion about the origin of rice. It was then that the Joponica strain was probably crossbred with a wild strain of rice to create the Indica strain. The indica strain has longer grains. If you've ever been to an Indian restaurant, you probably had either Basmati or Jasmine rice, both of which come from the indica strain. The shorter grained rice, which is more popular in East Asia, comes from the Japonica strain. Jeponika tends to be white and sticky, whereas indica is more fluffy. rice, not surprisingly, is a wetlands plant. It thrives best in places like marshes and riparian zones

Starting point is 00:03:40 alongside rivers and lakes. When rice was first cultivated, it was actually cultivated on dry land. Another big innovation was to grow rice in a way that was closer to its native habitat, rice paddies. The first evidence of this dates back about 6,000 years ago in China. Growing rice in a patty is much more labor intensive than growing it on dry land. You have to build the walls of a paddies. paddy, create a water control system to flood and drain it, and of course you have to work in water. However, the extra work was worth it because rice patties were much more productive. The process of building rice patties was something that took centuries in some places.

Starting point is 00:04:18 Terraced rice patties allowed for agriculture to take place on the sides of hills and mountains, where otherwise you couldn't grow anything. Probably the best example of this has to be the rice terraces around Benawe in the Philippines. They have been created over the course of 2,000 years, and they literally line the mountain sides of this region. It's been called the Eighth Wonder of the World, and if you ever find yourself in the Philippines, I highly recommend you visit, as it might be the greatest attraction in the country. Rice terracing technology was exported and used in places such as Bali and northern Vietnam, which also have extensive terraces. Rice made its way to Indonesia about 5,000 years ago and came to the Korean Peninsula in Japan between 5,500 years ago and,

Starting point is 00:05:00 3,200 years ago. There are no native wild rice species in either Korea or Japan. Rice did not spread throughout all of China. Northern China was never a big rice production area, and they developed a wheat culture. Noodles, dumplings, and buns are all products of Chinese wheat regions in the north. While Asia was, and still is, the major rice-producing region in the world, rice kept migrating west. Once rice made it to Central Asia, it was cultivated, but it never became quite the staple food that it was in East Asia and eastern and northern India. Ancient cultures in Mesopotamia and around the Mediterranean were aware of rice. The Egyptians grew rice, but it always took a backseat to wheat.

Starting point is 00:05:41 Likewise, there's evidence of rice being grown in Greece and Macedonia after Alexander the Great's troops brought back with them after their conquests in Asia. As I'm working my way west, I should mention the other place on Earth where rice was independently domesticated, West Africa. The species of African rice is known as Oriza Gaburima, and it's a separate species from the Asian or Riza Sativa. The African species was domesticated about 3,000 to 3,500 years ago, and it grew in a belt stretching along the coast of the Gulf of Guinea into Central Africa.

Starting point is 00:06:12 Some people have theorized that as the Sahara Desert began to grow and it ceased being green, rice was domesticated as wild rice became unavailable. The problem with African rice is that it wasn't as productive as Asian rice. When Asian rice finally made its way to Africa, it mostly replaced the color. cultivation of the local domesticated rice. Again, while rice was known in Europe, it wasn't a major crop until it was brought over in the 8th century by the Moors. The Moors brought rice with them when they invaded the Iberian Peninsula, and they found that it grew well in places like Majorca and Valencia. Now, if you remember back to my episode on the world's oldest

Starting point is 00:06:48 democratic body, the Valencia waterboard, that board was established to allocate water for the growing of rice. Today, rice is still grown around Valencia and Spain. signature dish, paella, is based on rice. The Moors also brought rice to the island of Sicily. From there, rice eventually spread to Italy and France. The Poe River Valley in Italy became one of the biggest rice growing regions in Europe. Even though Europe was the last place in the world to cultivate rice, it was the Europeans who brought rice to the Americas. Here I need to make note of the food which many people in North America call wild rice, Canadian rice, or Indian rice. This is actually not a true rice. It sort of looks like rice, and you can serve it in some ways like rice, but it's

Starting point is 00:07:32 actually an aquatic grass. As with Europe, rice never became a staple crop in the Americas, but it did find a niche in some reasons. Today, the only non-Asian country, which is in the top 10 in global rice production, is Brazil. Likewise, there's production in Mexico and the United States. The state with the largest amount of rice production is Arkansas, followed by California and Louisiana. The British also brought rice to Australia. While not the best place to grow rice, even in northern Australia, which is quite wet, they export the vast majority of what is produced because domestic consumption is so low. Today, rice is the third largest crop in the world by weight behind sugar cane and corn.

Starting point is 00:08:12 However, it provides more calories than any other food stuff, with 20% of all global calories consumed coming from rice. The largest rice producing countries by a wide margin are China and India, which produced 212 and 178 million metric tons respectively in 2020. They are followed by Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Thailand. The country with the highest per capita production is Cambodia. 92% of all rice produced globally is for domestic consumption. The United States is actually the third largest exporter of rice,

Starting point is 00:08:47 even though it doesn't rank in the top 10 for production, simply because Americans don't consume as much of it. Given the importance of rice globally for food, it has received a lot of attention during the Green Revolution. In a previous episode, I talked about Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug and what he did for developing new strains of wheat to help combat hunger. Similar efforts were made to develop new and improved strains of rice. In addition to improved yields, some strains were developed with added nutrients. Golden rice is a strain that was developed with genetic engineering that has dramatically increased levels of beta-carotene. Beta-carotene is a strain that is a

Starting point is 00:09:22 a pro-vitamin that the human body can synthesize into vitamin A. It's been rather controversial, but Golden Rice has 23 times the beta-carotene as normal rice. The first country to approve it was the Philippines in 2021. Vitamin A deficiency is a very serious problem in the developing world, especially among children. And if it's severe enough, it can actually cause blindness. There are currently over 40,000 variants of rice that exist today, all of which came from the two wild strains in Africa and Asia. As important as rice is today, it's going to become even more important in the future. The world's population is expected to keep growing for at least the next few decades, mostly in regions that are large consumers of rice. Rice demand is expected to continue to increase

Starting point is 00:10:07 at least until the year 2050. One of the newest ideas which is being developed is perennial rice, which wouldn't have to be planted every year. If this could be successfully developed, it would dramatically reduce the amount of time and energy put into growing rice, and it would also dramatically reduce soil erosion. Rice is one of the most important crops grown in the world today. This has remained unchanged for about 5,000 years. And it might very well be the case for the next 5,000. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kiever. I want to give a big shout out to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon, including the show's producers. Your support helps me put out a show

Starting point is 00:10:52 every single day. And also, Patreon is currently the only place where Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise is available to the top tier of supporters. If you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and members of the Completionist Club, you can join the Everything Everywhere Daily Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The History of Rice (Encore)

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.