Rice

History

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Early Spread of Rice

• From an early beginning somewhere in the Asian arc, the process of diffusion has carried rice in all directions until today it is cultivated on every continent save Antarctica.
• In this early hearth area, rice was grown in forest clearing under a system of shifting cultivation.
• The crop was grown by direct seeding and without standing water.
• Rice was grown on "farms" under conditions only slightly different from those to which wild rice was subject.
• A similar but independent pattern of the incorporation of wildrice into an agricultural system may well have taken place in one or more locations in Africa at approximately the same time.
• It was in china that the processes of puddling soil and transplanting seedlings were likely refined.
• Both operations became integral parts of rice farming and remain very widely practiced to this day.
• Transplanting, like puddling, provides the farmer with the ability to better accommodate the rice crop to a finite water supply by shortening the field duration (since seedlings are grown separately, and a higher density) and adjusting the planting calendar.
• With the development of puddling and transplanting, rice became truly domesticated.
• In China, the history of rice valleys and low-lying areas is longer that its history as a dryland crop.
• In southeast Asia, by contrast, rice was originally produced under dryland conditions in the uplands, and only recently did it come to occupy the vast river deltas.
• Migrant peoples from South china or perhaps northern Vietnam carried the traditions of wetland rice cultivation to the Philippines during the second millennium B.C. and deutero-Malays carried the practice to Indonesia about 1500 B.C. From china or Korea, the crop was introduced to Japan no later than 100 B.C.
• Movement to western India and to Sri Lanka was also accomplished very early.
• The crop may well have been introduced to Greece and neighboring areas of the Mediterranean by the returning members of Alexander the Great 's expedition to India ca. 344-324 B.C.
• From a centre in Greece and Sicily, rice spread gradually throughout the southern portions of Europe and to a few locations in North Africa.
• Interestingly enough, medical geographers in the 16th century played an important role in limiting the adoption of rice as a major crop in the Mediterranean area.
• During the 16th and early 17th centuries, malaria was a major disease in southern Europe, and it was believed to be spread by the bad air (hence the origin of the name ) of swampy areas.
• Major drainage projects were undertaken in southern Italy, and wetland rice cultivation was discouraged in some regions.
• In fact, it was actually forbidden on the outskirts of a number of large towns.
• Such measures were a significant barrier to the diffusion of rice in Europe.
• Carbon dioxide has long been the prime suspect for the green house effect and warming up of earth , but it is now known that, methane traps 20 times more energy.
• Its agreed that methane concentrations are increasing at the rate of approximately 1% yr.
• A major methane source, perhaps even the largest of all, is flooded riceland.
• Not only do methane-producing bacteria thrive in such an environment, but rice plants themselves act as gas vents, putting greater-than-expected concentrations into the atmosphere.
• The problem is, of course, magnified by the extension of rice area, by the expansion of irrigation facilities, and especially by the enlargement of double-cropped rice areas. Rice fields are suspected of putting 115 million t of methane into the atmosphere each year.
• This is at least equal to the total production from all of the world's natural swamps and wetlands.
• It is possible that agricultural intensification is hastening environmental degradation.
• As a result of Europe's great Age of Exploration, new lands to the west became available for exploitation.
• Rice cultivation was introduced to the New World by early European settlers.
• The Portuguese carried it to Brazil, and the Spanish introduced its cultivation to several locations in Central and South America.
• The first record for North America dates from 168.
• The crop may well have been carried to that area by slaves brought from Madagascar.
• Early in the 18th century, rice spread to Louisiana, but not until the 20th century was it produced in California's Sacramento Valley.
• The introduction in the latter area corresponded almost exactly with the timing of the first successful crop in Australia's New South Wales.

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