Rice
The Amazing Grain

The story is told that when the Shah of Iran was crowned emperor in 1967, he received many expensive gifts from heads of government all over the world. But one gift was unique. It was a bag of rice from the President of the Republic of the Philippines. For centuries, throughout all of Asia, one crop has remained the most important --- rice. In some parts of the continent, the word for rice is the same as that for food, for agriculture, or even for life itself. More than a billion men and women spend the bulk of their lives doing little more than growing enough rice to keep alive. Perhaps, in a most significant way, the Philippine president gave the Shah a symbolic gift of life. A cereal grain which belongs to the grass family, rice grows best in shallow water and thrives in tropical areas with warm and wet climate. A type of grass called "wild rice" grows in Central Canada and parts of the Northern United States, but in spite of its name, this grain is not rice, nor closely related to it. No one knows exactly when or where rice originated. Historians claimed it probably first grew wild and was gathered and eaten in Southeast Asia thousands of years ago. The Hunan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology in China has evidence of 8,000-year-old rice. Archaeologists have found additional evidence that people cultivated rice for food about 5,000 B.C. in southern China and northern part of Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. From there, rice spread northward to China, Japan and Korea, westward to India, and southward to Indonesia. Rice reached the American colonies during the 1600's. The world's number one food crop, rice provides 35 to 80 percent of the calories in the daily diet of 2.7 billion Asians --- that's 59% or more than half the world's population. From sushi to sake, from soups to stir-fries, from cereals to baby food, from sweetmeats and confections to simple plain fare, the grain dominates the Asian diet. Rice is a versatile food --- eaten plain, or mixed with meat, fish or fowl, or vegetables. Or combined with fruits, nuts, coconuts or honey. Rice is boiled, steamed, baked or stir-fried. It is eaten wet and sticky, or light, fluffy and dry. Flour from rice is made into breads, cakes, and cookies. Rice is soaked, ritually rinsed before cooking, or cooked as is, covered or uncovered. In Spain, rice is "arroz", in Italy,"risotto", in the Middle East, "pilaf", and in Creole,"pilau." Tradition, culture and geography have much to do in how rice is cooked and eaten. There are over 70,000 varieties of rice, but mainly, it is classified by length of grains --- short, medium, or long. Short and medium grains cook moist, tender and with a slight stickiness. Long grain, three or more times as long as it is wide, cooks separate and fluffy. Carolina rice, basmati and their brown counterparts are all in this category. There are many types of rice found in the market today ---parboiled or converted rice is steam-pressure-treated before milling, and is firm-textured and separate when cooked; pre-cooked, quick or instant rice has been milled, completely cooked and dried; glutinous rice, or sweet rice, is sticky, waxy and is most often used in desserts; Indian rice cooks firm to the bite, or "al dente," and is popularly cooked in Italy as "risotto;" jazmine rice, which grows in Thailand and now successfully grown in the United States, is an aromatic long grain variety which cooks moist and tender like medium grain. In the United States, rice comes either brown or white. In many other parts of the world, there is red, blue, purple, and striped rice. Ninety two percent of the world crop is raised and eaten almost entirely in Asia --- a third of it in China, a fifth of it in India, where it is the first food a bride offers her husband, and the first food offered a newborn. Fittingly, the ancient Indian sanskrit word for rice also meant "sustainer of the human race." In China, instead of "How are You," the typical greeting is "Have you had your rice today?" Young Chinese girls are warned to eat every grain of rice in their bowls, or each grain left will appear as pockmarks on the face of their future husbands. In Japan, where the word for cooked rice is the same as the word for "meal," the grains are called "little Buddhas" so Japanese children will finish all the rice in their bowls. In Burma, a person eats 500 pounds of rice a year --- a daily consumption of 1 and 1/4 pounds; in China, some 300 to 400 pounds per person per year. An average person in Asia, however, might eat as much as 200 pounds in a year, compared to an American who eats an average of eight. Rice, evidently, has not quite replaced the potato and the pasta in American diet. But the trend is changing. Americans are discovering the rich balance of vitamins, minerals, amino acids and fiber in rice, that it is low in fat and sodium, rich in complex carbohydrates, and that it is an energy food which is a good source of protein.

A local near the rice terraces in Banuaue, Philippines.

Most of all, thanks to University of Massachusetts researcher and biologist Robert Nicolosi, health-conscious Americans are learning recent experiment results that seem to point out that rice bran oil, extracted properly, can lower blood cholesterol. Although containing three times the saturated fats of other cooking oils, rice bran oil is unusually rich in a substance called "oryzanol," a fatty, acid-free lipid that blocks the formation of low density lipids or "LDLs," also known as the bad cholesterol. Some doctors are recommending rice as a natural potent antidote to diarrhea, or as part of the diet of people with food allergies. The rice plant itself has varied usage. Developing nations are exploiting it from root to leaf tip. Breweries use the kernels to make mash, an important ingredient in beer. The Japanese use it to make rice wine called "sake," and to make vinegar. Farmers use rice hulls for fertilizers, and add bran to feed their livestock. The straw provides fuel and bedding. Rice hulls are also used as an ingredient in such products as insulation, cement, bricks or building blocks. A liquid chemical, "furfural," derived from rice hulls, is used in the production of synthetic fibers for textiles. Cooking oil is extracted from the bran. Leather shoes are made supple with rice oil. Rice bran yields oil used for soaps and cosmetics. The straw from rice plants are used to thatch roofs, to weave sandals, hats and baskets, to make handicrafts and toys. The list goes on. For most Asians, rice is more than just food. For ages, they have revered rice, the amazing grain. In Japan, white-robed Shinto priests cook rice twice daily to present to Amaterasu, a sun goddess at the Grand Shrine of Ise, 190 miles southwest of Tokyo. The goddess brought a handful of rice from heaven, they believed, so the Japanese can grow it and prosper. Every Autumn, the emperor sends to the Shrine of Ise an offering of the first rice stalks harvested from the rice field he himself has planted on the imperial palace grounds. In Bali, housewives put cooked rice on banana leaves every morning and leave them at the road outside as offerings to the spirits who "must be fed so they will be happy and not bother us." In most Asian cultures, newlyweds are showered with rice so they will be blessed with many children, with prosperity and abundance. There are multitudes of other Asian beliefs and practices connected with rice. There are, perhaps, as many as forty thousand varieties of rice grown on every continent, except Antarctica. The biggest rice producers are Burma, Vietnam, Thailand, China, Indonesia and India. Thailand is the largest exporter of rice. Japan, which is another large producer, consumes all that it grows. The United States, the twelfth largest producer, is more of an exporter than a rice consumer. It exports half of all the rice it grows in farming regions of Arkansas, California, Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi and Missouri. Successful rice farmers are very skilled. Rice grows in water, so farmers must know how to keep just the right amount of water in their rice fields --- too little and the plant dries up, too much and it drowns. In 1960, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), an autonomous, nonprofit agricultural research and training center was established in the Philippines by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. Its purpose --- to increase total world food production from rice-based farming systems while protecting the environment and sustaining natural resources, to improve the well-being of present and future generations of rice farmers and consumers, especially in developing countries, and to generate and disseminate rice-related knowledge and technology through national rice research systems. It receives financial support from some thirty governments and international agencies. By year 2000, there will be at least half a billion more people to feed in the world as population grows from almost 5.5 to 6.1 billion --- almost four out of five of them will live in developing countries. According to World Bank statistics, more than half the world's population (3.2 billion) live in low-income countries. More than half of these countries are in Sub-Saharan Africa, but more than 80% of the people living in low-income countries are in Asia. There are currently about 125 developing countries, a group often referred to as the Third World. By the turn of the century, one out of every three persons on earth, especially those from Third World countries, will depend on rice for more than half of his or her daily food. Today, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute, more than 800 million people --- one in five people in the developing world --- are "food insecure." They lack the ability to buy or grow the food required to lead healthy and productive lives. One hundred and eighty-five million preschool children are malnourished. IRRI reports more problems in the horizon. The world is running out of prime agricultural lands which are increasingly being used for other purposes. Water tables are dropping. The environment is continuously being threatened by degradation. The world's climate pattern is changing, and global warming is a real major concern. All these may eventually affect the world's capacity to feed its rural poor. The challenge facing research agencies today such as IRRI is to find ways to help farmers in developing countries to grow more rice on limited land, with less water, less labor, and less chemical input, and to do so without harming the environment. The global community are putting their heads together to find some solutions. Hopefully, the answers will come soon.

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